


Savages

by eirabach



Series: Testaments [1]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Alan Tracy versus the old College Try, Brotherly Angst, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Gordon Tracy and being extremely careful what you wish for lest the entire planet goes pop, I have a very long playlist for this, John's scarier, M/M, Penny has a gun, Post-Canon, Smut, Strap in, The dynamics are Fucked, This is a love story, Thunderbirds are Go! - Freeform, Virgil Tracy versus the entire universe, also Scott, but not entirely in the way you might think, but that's what happens when you let me at them I guess, eight years is a really long time., just sayin, no moderation here we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23861758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: In years to come they'll all agree; it was over the day Jeff Tracy came home.
Relationships: Penelope Creighton-Ward/Gordon Tracy
Series: Testaments [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933972
Comments: 92
Kudos: 53





	1. Out of Eden (I)

**_Thursday 4th October, 2063._ **

**_Cambrian coastline, Wales._ **

_ The road ends, as all roads must, at the ocean.  _

_ The house is old and dilapidated, a stranded survivor of the disaster that had once befallen this place, and it feels -- if not right, then at the least appropriate -- that they have ended up here.  _

_ It’s one of her earliest memories, the Tide. War had been raging and her father had been gone, so it must have been one of her nanny’s who’d left the holovision running, who’d left Penelope, small and alone, to watch, horrorstruck, as the long-ignored science had been proven right and the sea had risen to reclaim what was one its own. She remembers the refugees, grey-faced and shaking, telling of how the sea had risen and risen and risen until it was too late to run. Until only those who lived on the hillsides had been left, the bloated bodies of their neighbours bobbing serenely in their gardens. _

_ They hadn’t had it worst, here on the comparatively sheltered Welsh coastline, but their sea defences had been weak, their government distracted, and the village of Abermeurig had drowned. The bogland welcoming the ocean like an old friend, and the people too elderly or too foolish to flee. _

_ There had been no International Rescue, then. Lucille Tracy had been alive and well and nursing her fourth son, the small tragedy of her death not yet enough to prevent that which would be so much greater. That same son stands at the water’s edge now, kicking stones into the sea as though attempting to rebuild what’s lost one small block at a time, his own little defence against the indefensible. _

_ There was a legend here, once, of a drowned kingdom, of locks left open and church bells that rang out through the silent nights -- a cry for help that would never come. The church of Abermeurig has long since rotted into the silt, but Gordon kicks and kicks regardless. Pebble after pebble swallowed by the grey depths and there’s no International Rescue now, either. _

_ Penelope wipes damp palms against her thighs, and considers exactly what she's going to do about it. _

* * *

**Wednesday 11th July, 2063.**

**Tracy Island, Pacific Ocean.**

They come home.

They all come home. 

And it isn’t that she doesn’t expect it, because how could she ever expect anything  _ less _ , but it’s different, expecting it. Different to consider in a calm and faintly detached way, how it might feel to see the hulking body of the Zero XL fall apart into its constituent parts. How she might head down to the hanger and watch Two redock. How she would hold herself. How she would smile. Just what, exactly, she’d say.

She had meant to say something, she’s sure.

But then she had rather expected it to be Scott, disembarking with his father’s arm held aloft in victory. It isn’t. It puts her on the spot. A little.

Jeff Tracy is grey, hair and skin and baldric alike, his movements slow and pained, and although he has a good six inches of height on Gordon he’s leaning into him as though he’s the only thing keeping him from collapsing to the ground. It’s probable that he is, and Penelope has a brief flare of sympathy for the man. She has an inkling of what that feels like, after all.

Fortunately Grandma Tracy is right there, her heart just the right side of broken to whip the man Penelope barely recognises into her arms and drag him away toward the comforts of home. Penelope has never quite had her heart broken, not thoroughly, or, at least, not thoroughly  _ enough _ . Perhaps that explains the delay.

Perhaps that explains why she’s standing here, hands folded neatly together, silent and awkward and  _ waiting _ .

She really did think she’d had quite enough of waiting.

Gordon has. Gordon really, quite blatantly, has. Eight years for his father, who knows how many for her, and that’s a lie isn’t it? That’s a lie, because Penelope knows exactly how long Gordon’s waited for her. She’s been waiting for herself just the same.

She owes them both this moment, doesn’t she? And a Lady always pays her debts.

A Lady generally doesn’t bolt, heels and all, across an aircraft hanger and throw herself, body and soul, into the arms of her work colleague. It’s hardly proper though it hardly matters, not when he catches her mid leap, momentum spinning them ninety degrees as he practically crushes her against him.

It's hardly proper and the edge of his rebreather catches against her collarbone, but that hardly matters either. Nothing much matters at all. Not when she can burrow her nose into the crook of his neck and just  _ breathe _ . It feels like days since she’s breathed. Months. It’s distinctly possible that before this moment, she never really has. He’s muttering something against the crown of her head, and she’d pull away to hear him, she would, but her fingers are too tightly wound through the curls at the back of his neck, his arms around her waist too perfectly solid and real and  _ here _ . God, he’s actually here.

Expectations are one thing, but reality -- oh, the  _ reality _ . Reality is warm and solid beneath her, reality is fingerprint bruises between her shoulder blades, reality is lips at her temple and sweat under her palms and a pulse that thunders through her skin and --

“Oh my god, get a  _ room _ !”

The reality is that Alan Tracy is a dead child walking, and that’s a shame, it is, but reality is like that, sometimes. 

But then Gordon laughs, soft and  _ delighted _ against the shell of her ear, and perhaps she will suffer the youngest to live just a little while longer.

"Later, yeah?"

And she's had enough of waiting but she supposes she can wait for this. Special circumstances after all, and her patience is only piqued by anticipation.

"Later," she promises. " _ Later _ ."

**01:00 NZST 07/12/63. Thursday. Probably.**

Dad holds court, propped up on pillows that Grandma repeatedly fluffs, all his children sat around his feet like disciples. Well. They had been sitting. Now they’re mostly flopping over, adrenaline crashing, tired eyes still intensely fixed on their now dozing father.

None of them want to be the first to leave, these hours all together too precious, too hard fought for, to abandon for something as vague and unnecessary as  _ sleep _ . Gordon usually runs on four and a half hours, five at a very generous push, so he's fine. Dandy. Definitely not passing out while using Sherbet as a wriggly, panting pillow.

Ok, maybe a bit of passing out. Very briefly. A power nap. Scott can take that shit eating grin off both his faces, honestly. It's  _ fine. Alan's _ already snoring, arms on the coffee table and face smushed against the wood grain. Scott can pull that face at  _ him _ .

Gordon is not talking to Alan, and not just cause he's asleep either. Alan is in the  _ shit _ . Alan's gonna  _ suffer _ .

First off though, Gordon's gonna take his advice. Again.

Cause jokes on baby bro, here, they already  _ had  _ a room. His room. Him. And Penny. Together. That was a thing that happened in the nebulous  _ before _ , when Dad had been a distant ghost to chase, still. When the certainty of success had been -- well. There hadn’t been a lot of certainty, had there. Not for Gordon, and not for Penny either. No matter how much she might have denied it if anyone asked.

Not that Gordon had to ask, of course. He can take a  _ hint _ .

If the hints look like Lady Penelope, wrapped in pink silk, hands on his chest and lips at his throat?

He’s all over that. All. Over.

Except he wasn’t, not then. Not  _ before _ . Not when neither of them could be certain about anything at all, not whether this was a beginning or whether it was the end, and yeah there are  _ ways _ of saying goodbye. Sure there are. But Penny deserved more than that. They deserve more than that.

Penny sighs softly beside him, one hand on Sherbet’s belly and two fingers of the other hooked through the belt loops of Gordon's shorts. He’s very aware of those fingers, of the tug of the fabric whenever she shifts to follow Scott and Virgil’s hushed conversation, of the gentle pressure of her arm along his spine. If anyone said anything she could pretend to be holding him upright, of course. Make a joke of it with a roll of her eyes and a  _ well, really, Gordon, I couldn’t have you collapsing on poor Bertie again could I _ ? But Gordon’s tucked his own hand between them to thumb circles into the skin at her waist, fingers splayed high enough to feel her breath hitch, and he’s never really been any good at pretending at all.

It’s one am and Alan’s asleep, and Penny’s thigh is warm against his and they said later, didn’t they?

It’s definitely later.

“I’m going to bed.” John unwinds himself from the ground, his joints creaking ominously for a man only two years older than Gordon himself. “It’s -- it’s been a day, hasn’t it?”

There’s a murmur of assent from Grandma and Kayo and a strangely fierce  _ h’ain’t that the truth _ from Parker, and then everyone seems to move at once. Virgil gently helping their father while Scott heaves Alan up over his shoulder, Brains totters over to open the med suite doors, and Penelope, looking as awake and alert as ever, is standing over him and holding out her hand.

“Ready?” she says. 

He blinks at her. Takes her hand and lets her pull him from the ground. “Sure. Course. Yeah, sure.”

\---

Gordon has possibly never appeared less sure of anything in all the years she’s known him, and honestly, she’s trying terribly hard not to be offended.

One does not look like Penelope in Penelope’s line of work without having the clearest and most nuanced sense of what a slightly raised eyebrow or the tilt of a hip can achieve under the right circumstances. She is well aware of her ability to turn men into gibbering wrecks, she’s been playing on it, to one extent or another, for most of her adult life. She just hadn’t anticipated it becoming an issue  _ here _ .

But perhaps she’s being unfair. It has been, as John so succinctly put it,  _ a day _ . A week. Nigh on a decade, really, if she’s being totally honest with herself. Eight long long years of frantic action and selfless heroism built upon a bedrock of grief so fundamental, so intrinsic, that it’s only now in its sudden absence, that Penelope even realises it was ever there.

The first time she’d ever stepped foot on Tracy Island had been the day after Jeff Tracy had died, after its beating heart had been ripped from it and from the family that called it home, and Gordon had been there. Young, ever so young, blond and tanned and vomiting over a cliffedge, and it would be wrong -- never mind  _ illegal _ \-- to say that she’d fallen in love with him then, but both she and the man she’d come to know -- they’d both been formed out of that grief. Out of that day.

It’s a different day, now. A different world. And Gordon’s holding her hand, the living room emptying around them, and perhaps he isn’t sure, but she is.

Isn’t she?

Goodness, but she’s tired.

“Hey,” Gordon’s voice is soft, but it’s not as soft as his eyes, nor anything like as gentle as the pass of his thumb over the pulsepoint at her wrist. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look kinda like you might pass out.”

There’s an irony in him pointing that out, of course, as she’s been more or less bodily holding him upright for the past hour at least. But he’s not quite  _ wrong _ , exactly. 

“Seems rather unfair of me,” she says in lieu of agreement, “since you’re the one who’s spent the day in deep space.”

Gordon shrugs, and smiles, and she takes advantage of their lack of observers to sway into him a little, to let herself bask in that smile the way she so often wants to and so very rarely does.

“Just a day in the life, I guess.”

“Hardly.”

“Yeah.” He copies her movement, leaning in until only their clasped hands are left between them, pressing into the cotton of his shirt and settling in the space above her breasts. “Maybe… maybe not  _ just _ a day, then.”

In her bare feet Penelope has to tilt her head up to catch the intensity of his gaze, just enough so as she could press her lips against his jaw, if she wanted to. She wants to, so she does, and savours the little shiver that runs through him. Commits it to that place in her memory that she’s dedicated to the parts of him that she wishes to keep for herself.

The world, she’s long since decided, has had far too much of him already.

“It’s late,” she says,  _ later _ , actually, although she fears  _ that _ might have to wait. She’s unsteady on her feet just from sheer exhaustion and Gordon can’t be far behind. “Take me to bed?”

He laughs, a low rumble that she feels down to her toes.

“Oh,  _ at once _ , m’lady.”

**Tracy Island. Earth. 062663. Zero dark thirty.**

Jeff Tracy knows a hell of a lot about dying.

He knows exactly what hypoxia feels like, the awful, sickening clawing of nails against skin and the pulse of useless blood behind bulging eyeballs. He knows the leaden dread of sepsis that comes from watching an open wound edge black, and the burn of exposed flesh. He knows because he’s felt them, all of them, the hundreds of thousands of different ways a man can die, alone and ungrieved, in the unforgiving vastness of the universe he loves. He knows he survived them all, though he doesn’t and never will know how.

He’s survived them all, but he still doesn’t know if he believes it.

His sons, his sons came for him. They found him and they saved him and they brought him home, and that’s -- that’s less unbelievable, somehow, than the fact he’s still alive at all. Tracys are a force of nature, godammit, and he produced _fi_ _ ve _ of them. Five boys, as brilliant as they were different, as dear to him as anything on this planet could ever possibly be, and then, and then they’d come for him, not as the wild-hearted boys he’d left, but as  _ men _ .

They look like boys, now. Children scattered around the comms room where they dropped, four pairs of eyes heavy lidded and filled with the sort of wonder that puts him in mind of some half forgotten Christmas mornings a dozen lifetimes ago. The fifth pair closed an hour ago, his youngest’s face slack in sleep but still upturned, still watching, even behind the bruise blue lids. It makes him ache, worse than gravity or exhaustion or the soft blended horror of his mother’s meatloaf. It makes him sick.

Scott is beaming and Alan’s sleeping and Virgil’s  _ talking _ and it isn’t that Jeff doesn’t want to listen -- god, but he’d have given anything twenty four hours ago just to  _ listen _ \-- but his head is full of lead, the air thick and unfamiliar against his tongue, and all he really wants, desperately, cripplingly  _ wants _ \-- is the thin comforter of a med bed and the relief of pressurised oxygen.

He’s used to not getting what he wants, now, and every time Gordon slips further sideways into the little blonde Jeff can’t quite place, Jeff finds himself sitting up straighter, taller, stiffer. Proof positive that he’s back, that he’s fine. Proof of a life he barely knows how to begin.

And Virgil’s still talking, but John -- 

John’s watching.

Jeff can feel it, can feel those blue-green eyes burning into him from where John sits, cross-legged, at Scott’s feet. He hasn’t met them, not while Virgil’s talking, but he can tell they haven’t left him, his clever boy was always far too clever for Jeff’s own good.

They look like children, his boys, but they’re men. And John -- John’s an astronaut. John knows the sullen thud of gravity in his veins, the pressure -- the terrible, agonising pressure -- behind bleary eyes. John’s clever, and John’s watching, and Jeff barely knows him at all, not now, not the man he’s become, but he knows the calculating look in those eyes. He sees the way they slide from Jeff to Virgil and back again and count three, two, one --

Virgil breaks for breath, and John rises.

“I’m going to bed. It’s --” a pause, a half breath while those bright eyes flash up to meet his, “it’s been a  _ day _ , hasn’t it.”

Then everyone is moving, speaking, shifting until the cool grey of the medbay appears before him so suddenly it almost seems as though perhaps Brains has finally managed to perfect teleportation technology. 

“We’ll sort out something better,” Virgil says, surveying the clinical space with an artist’s displeasure, “something a bit more homey, yeah?”

“This is more than enough for me, son,” Jeff manages, and Virgil’s smile is reward enough that he barely regrets the strain on his aching throat. “More than I could have dreamed of.”

“Yeah well.” Virgil sits him down on the edge of the medbed and gently helps to lift his legs. He’s still smiling, and Jeff grits his teeth against the urge to grimace as his own child tucks him in like the invalid he probably is. “I reckon tomorrow we can do better.”

Virgil links up every system Jeff remembers and many he’s never seen, threading wiring and taping sensors and smoothing sheets until it’s almost too much, almost unbearable and all Jeff can think about is --

_ Tomorrow.  _

Oh, God. 

Tomorrow.

**Gordon Tracy’s Bedroom. Middle of the Night. Some day he won’t forget.**

It is possible, probable, even, that Gordon has a bit of a reputation. And if he does, and this is all hypothetical of course, he almost certainly deserves it.

When you live on an island with only your brothers, Brains, your adoptive sister and your  _ grandma _ for company, you kinda have to make the best of the chances you get.

It is possible some of those chances may have made it into the papers.

It is credible that Scott may have chased him down with a garden hose, afterward.

It is certain that Scott is a goddamn  _ hypocrite _ .

Anyway.

There are things that might be expected to happen, in Gordon Tracy’s bedroom.

Things involving lips and teeth and hands and tongues, whispers in the dark and cries muffled by mouths that give and take and  _ want _ . Things that he’s dreamed of, that he’s done, hundreds of times. Thousands, even. But never with her. Never when they mattered. Never when they  _ meant _ .

These are the things that linger in that promise of  _ later _ , things he’s had just a taste of, her skin and her sweat and the curve of her hip, things that he’s refused once already cause apparently he’s actually an  _ idiot _ and it’s not  _ right _ to fuck the love of your life for the first time under the presumption you’re never going to see them again.

Penelope had actually laughed at him.  _ Laughed _ . All peach and pink and sprawled across his bedsheets.

_ “Really Gordon? Nobility? Now?” _

If he’d had any blood in his brain he might have been offended by that, honestly. But he hadn’t, and she’d known it, and god, but her hands had been so hot. Her hands had been so hot and fear had burned through him like wildfire.

Not like that. Not then. 

Not when forever meant nothing but a day and this meant so much more.

“ _ I’m gonna come back,”  _ he’d sworn, pressed into the skin above her heart. “ _ I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna make this up to you. Swear. _ ”

And she’d run her fingers through his hair and sworn right back.

“ _ Not if I make it up to you first _ .”

Things are meant to happen, in Gordon Tracy’s bedroom.

They don’t.

Thing is, Gordon’s secretly sentimental. Not in the way that Virgil is, or John can be. He doesn’t keep old paper photographs pressed between pages of books, or write concertos to honour the long since dead. He doesn’t have a whole section of a space station filled to the brim with the neatly categorized recordings of a hundred thousand last words. All the addresses and High School photos of every life he never saved. He’s not  _ maudlin _ . 

What he has is a closet, and a shoebox, and a memory full of all the things too big and too important to fit in either. 

And today, tonight, they’re too big to be sullied by expectations. Too much to file away anywhere but right in the very centre of his chest, deep and solid and inextricable. Too much like a beginning when last time was too much like an end, and it’s probably dumb as all hell to still be waiting for the  _ moment _ , but here they are anyway and he can’t regret it. Not really.

Penelope’s sleeping, her breaths soft and steady beneath the palm he’s kept on her belly, and Gordon’s watching. Not to be creepy, although he supposes on the surface it kinda is, but just  _ because _ . He’s exhausted, bone deep and almost painful, but he can’t quite bring himself to close his eyes. He can’t quite bring himself to  _ wake up _ .

It’s hard to believe his dad’s  _ alive _ . Alive, and safe and  _ here _ , just two hundred yards away, resting under the watchful eyes of Grandma and whichever of Gordon’s brothers has wheedled their way into bedside duty. He maybe ought to feel guilty, about that. That he hasn’t, didn’t, that his thoughts have strayed away from the medbed in the unknowable hours between them going to bed and him not sleeping.

Maybe he’ll feel guilty about it tomorrow.

For now, Penelope’s sleeping. Here, with him. Her head is pillowed against his shoulder and her bare legs are curled around his own.

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, he still finds that even harder to believe. He’s never been the type to believe in miracles, seen far too many begged for and rejected, but  _ this -- _

The softest of movements against his arm, and Penelope’s voice rises, midnight gentle, between them. 

“You’re thinking very loudly darling, it’s really quite distracting.”

“I thought you were asleep?”

“I thought  _ you _ were tired.”

“I am."

“And I was.”

She lifts herself up onto her elbow and peers down at him, the corner of her mouth turning down in a way that makes Gordon’s breath catch in his throat.

“Is everything quite all right, Gordon?”

And he doesn’t have an answer for that, not yet. Not when reality still feels fragile as a soap bubble waiting for the one wrong move that could destroy it all. So instead he does what he should have done hours ago, days ago. Weeks. Years.

He reaches up, and pulls her down. Penelope smiles, sleep-worn and sloppy, against his mouth, and Gordon Tracy realises that for the first time in eight long years, he’s looking forward to tomorrow.


	2. The First Day

**Tracy Island, Day One.**

Dawn breaks, not the bright, tropical glare of his memory, but a soft grey sky above a restless sea, and it shouldn't burn his retinas but it does nevertheless.

"You gotta take it easy, Dad." Virgil's hands are huge and horribly gentle as they fit the wraparound sunglasses close to his face. "You've been through a lot."

This is pretty presumptuous, considering not one word of what he's been through has yet to leave Jeff's mouth, but there's a tremor to those hands that keeps Jeff still, and smiling, and safe.

"I'm going to be  _ fine _ , son."

"Mmmmhm." A final tap of the frames and a serious look. "You good?"

"We're good."

"Pleased to hear it." Scott's lounging against the doorway, blue-green in the muted light, and so much like a dream that Jeff's suddenly thankful for the privacy of dark lenses. "Now do you want the good news or the bad news?"

Virgil scoffs. "There's good news?"

"Must be the week for it." Scott grins, and pushes away from the door frame to help Jeff to his still obnoxiously unsteady feet. 

"Breakfast's ready." A beat. "Grandma made it."

"Oh joy." The two boys hoist him between them and he feels more than he sees Virgil's shudder.

"The coffee?"

"Alan hid the filters."

"Thank  _ god. _ " 

The three of them move as one from the sterile medbay and out into the house proper. The air is full of laughter and the smell of burnt toast, his mother batting at a smouldering hunk of something with a damp towel and  _ if you think it's so funny why don't you  _ \--

Then there's a gasp, frantic and wet, and Jeff finds himself unceremoniously leant up against the wall as both Scott and Virgil rush to their grandmother's side.

"Grandma?"

"You ok?"

"You sick?"

"Did you taste it?"

"Cheeky little -- no I didn't. I'm fine. Just fine."

She flaps a hand at them, dabbing the towel across her eyes, and offers Jeff a wobbly smile. "You're gonna be a sight for sore eyes for a while yet, kid."

Jeff smiles back, cheeks aching with it. "Could say the same to you." Virgil, his eyes widening, scampers back to his side and hoists him upright to help him walk. Jeff makes a point of noting each of his boys, John and Alan side by side, Scott helping his grandmother douse their smoking breakfast, Virgil's tight grip on his bicep. "All of you." Then, in realisation, “Where’s Gordon?”

The look that passes between them then isn’t one he’s grown to miss so much as it’s so familiar that it’s been ingrained on his psyche. It’s the one that means  _ out in the storm _ or  _ up on the roof _ or  _ centre spread of Sports Illustrated, Dad and we  _ did _ try to tell him, we did. _ It means  _ doing something he shouldn’t be _ , and goddammit but he hasn’t even been back a  _ day _ .

Virgil shifts awkwardly beside him, the one-two beat of a brother unsure of what weapon to deploy in the wayward child’s defence. “Maybe he’s swimming.”

Alan scoffs, milk spraying over John’s tablet and earning him a scowl. “Yeah,  _ maybe.  _ Getting a  _ work out _ .”

Without moving from her spot, Jeff’s mother reaches out and cuffs him solidly behind the ear.

“Ow! I’m just  _ saying _ !”

“Please don’t,” John mutters, “I’m trying to eat.”

“Oh yeah?” Alan’s beaming, leaning out of his grandmother’s reach, “That’s what she sai--”

“Oh my  _ god _ , enough!”

Scott laughs, high and full bellied, and it makes Jeff shake, makes him wobble as though he gets the joke, gets the reference, gets any of this at all.

“Whatever you do,” Virgil’s warning voice is far from solemn, “do  _ not  _ let Parker hear you talking like that.”

“Talkin’ like h’what, Mr Virgil sir?”

The laughter crashes into silence. Jeff remembers Lord Creighton-Ward’s butler as a quiet, faintly sinister presence, always hovering in the shadows with a cooling teapot and an expression that promised far worse things afoot. He’d been very little like Creighton-Ward himself -- a fairly cheerful guy with a quick wit and a penchant for something called a custard cream -- and Jeff had often wondered just how much of Creighton-Ward’s information had actually been accrued by the aristocrat, and how much had come about at the end of Parker’s fist.

Judging by the expression on Alan’s face, he hadn’t been too far off.

Parker doesn’t look especially dangerous now, not wearing a bathrobe, striped pyjamas and bearing in his arms a small, wriggling pug, but there’s a steel to those grey eyes that Jeff still recognises, a lump in Alan’s throat.

“Aloysis,” Jeff says, since apparently no one else dares speak, “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Surprised, Mr Tracy sir?” Parker’s eyebrows rise. “Could ‘ardly be ‘nywhere else, could we.”

“Lady Penelope and Parker are an integral part of International Rescue, Dad,” Scott says, words tripping out of him as though this is a speech he’s rehearsed but hadn’t quite expected to make. “They’ve helped us so --”

“Lady Penelope?” He can’t help the way he says it, the shock making him scoff, but last he remembers Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward had been a kid, barely eighteen and every tabloid’s favourite debutante. To think  _ she’s  _ part of International Rescue -- to think --

“Indeed, and ‘ave any of you  _ seen _ ‘er Ladyship this mornin’?” Parker lifts the little dog up and out, its stubby tail wagging frantically. “The rat wants dressin’”

“Ah,” says Virgil.

“Uh,” says Alan.

John lifts the tablet up and buries himself in its contents. The screen, Jeff can see from here, is blank. 

Parker’s eyes flit around the room, landing on each of Jeff’s sons in turn, and his expression sours like curdled milk. Jeff remembers the little blonde from the night before, and the way Gordon had swayed into her as though she were a gravity well and he a miscreant comet, spiralling far out of anyone’s control.

Oh.

_ Oh. _

It’s been  _ eight years. _

But then Jeff hasn't lived with Gordon -- God, how long has it been? Gordon had only been fourteen when he'd decided not to stay on the island, following a dream entirely of his own making and leaving for the States. Jeff had let him go -- Jeff had never been terribly good at stopping Gordon regardless -- and then...

And then. 

There's a clatter from the direction of the bedrooms followed by another gasp that isn’t out-loud so much as it reverberates through the room, shaking each of them as it passes and leaving an unsteadiness in its wake. Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, it appears, has arrived.

She’d been pretty last night, as far as Jeff remembers, but then he’s barely been paying attention. Young, blonde, attractive, not a child of his. That was all. This morning she’s beautiful. Her hair is piled artfully on top of her head, loose waves tucked behind her ears and a smile that intends to break hearts. She strides into the room as though she owns it, all long pale legs beneath the almost indecently short hem of a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt haphazardly buttoned. The shirts owner follows three steps behind her, wincing slightly as the dog finally wriggles free of Parker’s suddenly weakened grasp.

Scott whistles. Alan, his face the colour of Three after a fresh paint job, leaps from the table with a yelp and bolts for the main room leaving a trail of crumbs in his wake.

Gordon, thankfully fully clothed, hovers in the doorway, his gaze fixed to a point somewhere just above Parker's rapidly paling face, but the Lady Creighton-Ward seems to have no such compunctions. She breezes up to the table, into the centre of his family, as though she has always belonged there while Jeff Tracy, who does, is left only to watch.

She slides into Alan's empty seat, snatching half a bagel from John's plate, and beams as the little dog yaps at her bare feet.

"Good morning," she says brightly, as though the ashen cheeks of her butler have utterly escaped her notice. "Oh lovely, breakfast! So kind of you Mrs Tracy. John dear have you forgotten to charge your tab again? Is Alan quite alright?"

John rolls his eyes and pulls his plate closer. "You've traumatized him."

"What, by possessing legs?" Lady Creighton-Ward raises her eyebrows and laughs. "Poor love. Parker? Is there any Assam blend in the case?"

"Milady?" Parker bleats. She looks at him, sheer innocence, and something prickles at the back of Jeff's mind.

"Tea, Parker,” she commands, then turns that perfect smile on Jeff. “Mr Tracy. How does it feel to be home?”

“Different,” is all he can manage, “it’s certainly different.”

**06:30 NZST.**

The time’s projected on the ceiling, a neon blue countdown to the day ahead, and it’s not that Gordon doesn’t want to get up, he does, he’s usually been up for  _ hours _ by now, laps, lifesaving, all that good stuff. It’s just that he sort of can’t.

She’s got him pinned to the bed even from halfway across the room, silhouetted in the faint grey light that edges around his blinds as she changes, her makeup strewn across his dresser between all the bits of obsolete technology and sea glass that drive Scott mad.

She’s driving him mad. He’s starting to think she does it on purpose.

“You do know it’s rude to stare,” she says as she combs her hair over her shoulder, freshly pink lips curling into a smile as she catches his eye in the reflection of his mirror. 

“Rude to tease too, your Ladyship.”

“Nonsense.” The smile grows into a grin. “Teasing implies one does not intend to collect upon their promises.”

Gordon grins back, scooting up the bed so that he can fold his arms behind his head and watch the way her eyes darken. “There were promises?”

She sashays her way back over to the bed, kneeling on the end of the mattress before dropping forward so her hands are either side of his hips. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?”

“Hmm.” He shifts, leaning forward until their noses brush and he can entwine his fingers with hers. “Could use a reminder.”

She tuts, all feigned disapproval, but he sees the way her eyes flicker to his lips, feels his blood thrill as she sighs against his mouth. “You are hopeless.”

He releases her hands, runs his own up her back and tangles them in the ends of her carefully styled hair. “Oh.” He lets his lips touch hers, lightly, briefly, just a little whisper of a thing. “ _ Utterly _ .”

She hums, a vibration that he feels in every inch of his skin, then throws herself bodily from the bed and stands at the end of it, arms folded, expression imperious. Gordon drops back with a groan.

“Clearly I need to take you in hand.”

“Yeah, Penny. That was kinda the  _ point _ .”

She gasps, hand fluttering at her throat like she’s scandalised, like he hasn’t left the imprint of his teeth just three inches to the right. “Gordon, it’s  _ morning _ .”

He wriggles his eyebrows and kicks the blankets lower. “I’m  _ rebellious _ .”

“What _ ever _ will your father say!”

Oh. Yeah. There’s  _ that _ . 

It’s possible that the hideously awkward truth of that statement hits Penelope at exactly the same time, judging at least by the way the pink in her cheeks fades and her fingers begin to pluck at her shirt hem. Gordon scrambles to cover for it, unwilling to let the moment disappear beneath the crippling question of whatever comes  _ next _ . He shrugs then stretches, the image of unconcerned.

“Well done?”

This does at least make Penelope smile again. “To whom?”

“Me, of course,” he scoffs. “Jesus, Penny. Have you met yourself? He won’t believe it for a second.”

She leans back down to kiss him again, but this one is almost perfunctory, a farewell. “Poor man, he’s Space Crazy.”

Gordon’s smile freezes, but she doesn’t see. She’s already heading for the door, smartly dressed and perfectly put together, ready to begin another day as IR’s London Agent.

Gordon watches the door close, and counts the minutes on the ceiling. 

He doesn't know what his father will say. Not about Penny, or him, or him  _ and  _ Penny. Not about International Rescue or the Zero-XL. Not about Shadow, or the Olympics, or Alan, or anything at all really.

The minutes tick by, neon paling to pastel as the sky brightens, and the truth of it is --

The truth of it is, he doesn't  _ know _ .

\---

Penelope lets the bedroom door close behind her and stops dead.

“Walk of shame?”

Kayo’s leaning against the door jamb that leads to her own bedroom with her arms folded, wearing her uniform and a smirk on her face that automatically sets Penelope’s teeth on edge. 

It's not unexpected exactly, this is a small island and she happens to know she's kept Gordon in bed long past his usual habits, but she had hoped to make it at least a little further down the corridor before being apprehended. She'd also hoped it would be John, who could at least be relied upon to never speak of such a thing ever again even under torture. Kayo is quite a different matter, and will require rather different handling. So Penelope smiles, the one she usually saves for the tabloids, her lips thin and eyes a little too narrow. The one that warns the unwary that Lady Penelope is neither an idiot nor one prone to suffering them easily.

“Is there something of which I ought to be ashamed?”

Tanusha Kyrano is not an idiot. 

She pushes off the wall and shrugs, a relaxed, dismissive sort of motion entirely at odds with the unsubtle way she looks Penelope up and down.

“Dunno. You tell me.”

Fewer than twenty four hours ago, they’d fought together to keep the island safe, to ensure there’d be a home for Jeff to return to. For the boys. They hadn’t known, then, that this morning would ever come. Penelope wonders, somewhere in the back of her mind, if Kayo had truly believed it would. If her faith had been greater than Penelope’s own. That isn’t what she asks, though.

“Do you know me at all?”

Kayo raises her eyebrows, maybe at the question, or maybe at the way Penelope says it -- the creeping uncertainty in her bones coming out as something harsh. Needy, almost. She doesn’t recognise it in herself, isn’t at all sure if she likes it.

“As an agent?” Kayo says, “Or as my brother’s girlfriend? Kinda different things, Lady Penelope. Wouldn’t you say?”

_ Girlfriend _ . The word jars something behind her breastbone, something that Kayo must see in her face because the other woman’s expression softens slightly.

“Sorry,” she says, “I shouldn’t have presumed --” Kayo shrugs again, but there’s something more honest about this one, something that suggests what comes next is more a confession than a judgement. “It’s not like I can judge you and it’s all been -- pretty intense, lately. I’m sure when things settle --” she laughs shortly. “Let me know if he needs reining in, won’t you?”

Penelope doesn’t balk, she’s far too well trained for that, but that uncomfortable little spot behind her breastbone grows and twists until she struggles to keep her tone even against the lump in her airway.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“No,” Kayo is all brightness now, “I’m sure you can handle Gordy  _ just fine _ by yourself. In fact, I can teach you a trick --” 

Penelope doesn’t cringe either, but it’s a near run thing. “No, you misunderstand -- ”

Kayo smiles, sly and knowing, “Oh, no. Not Lady Penelope, I  _ get _ it. These things happen, no big deal.”

And that seems terribly unlikely, wildly, unbelievably so, because Penelope herself isn’t by any means sure that she  _ gets it _ , doesn’t know, not for certain, what there is to  _ get _ , exactly, beyond the painfully simple fact that Gordon Tracy has found his way under her skin. Not like an itch, not like something that can be scratched and dealt with and  _ ended _ , but something deeper. Something that’s burrowed down into the very bones of her, solid and heavy and  _ forever _ . 

_ Girlfriend.  _

It’s far too much. It isn’t nearly enough.

Kayo’s still smiling, her green eyes sharp and narrow, and Penelope realises one thing, at least, for sure.

She’s not going to breakfast like this.

“Do excuse me,” she says, polite as can be, “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten something rather important.”

She throws a last beatific smile over her shoulder as she slips back through Gordon’s bedroom door, and cherishes the way Kayo’s eyebrows draw together. After all, she does so hate to be predictable. 

What she’s about to do, well, it might be many things but it’s hardly  _ that _ .

Gordon’s half dressed, his hair mussed and damp from the shower, and he blinks owlishly at her as she pulls off her jeans and rips her shirt over her head.

“Penny?”

“Yes?” 

He’s holding one of his shirts, one of those hideous yellow things he insists on buying in bulk, but he doesn’t resist as she tugs it out of his grip, shimmying out of her jeans as she throws it on and buttons it as poorly as is decent over her underwear. The colour looks different on her. Bolder, somehow. A statement.

“Uh --” He can’t quite seem to meet her eyes as she adjusts the neckline lower, two high points of colour rising in his cheeks, and honestly, it’s almost as though he wasn’t the one who put the bruise there in the first place. “Are you -- is everything -- um --”

“Everything is fine, darling.” She grabs for his wrist and he watches in helpless silence as she removes one of the bands he wears and uses it to fix her hair into a bun. She spins on her heel to examine the result in the mirror and nods, satisfied, at the result. “Everything is  _ perfect _ .”

Through the reflection she watches Gordon shift modes, his colour and brows drawing down together as he watches the way she pulls at the curls that hang loose around her ears.“Really? Cause you’re kinda freaking me out.”

“Would you say it’s a big deal?”

“I’m sorry?”

She turns back to him then, her hands on her hips, her jaw tight. “If I were to arrive to breakfast with your family dressed like this. Would you say that was a  _ big deal _ ?”

He stares at her for a moment, then folds his arms over his chest and looks her up and down as though considering. “I mean, there have been  _ weirder _ breakfast outfits --”

“Kayo is outside."

Gordon’s training has been very different to Penelope’s. Physically he may have the measure of her if sheer brute force were to be required, and she knows from many long, long hours of decompression that he's twenty times the diver she will ever be, but when it comes to the art of secrecy she already knows that she's the master.

Where she has learned an artist's poker face, his expression allows every fleeting emotion free reign. Confusion, first. Concern. Something Penelope suspects might be dread. Finally he settles into something calm and neutral. A slight smile. A crease just between his brows.

It's his rescue face.

“Oh- _ kay _ . Did she see you?”

"She did." Penelope tosses her head. "She insinuated I might be making myself scarce."

Gordon scoffs. "Well she'd know."

The lump behind Penelope’s breastbone squirms into her throat, up her spine, as she dredges through her memory to pluck at the way Kayo had said  _ brother _ . Penelope had taken it as a threat, the way most of Kayo’s words should be. She hadn’t considered that it might have been a sneer. That perhaps there are more secrets, here, than her own.

She’s not sure she can bear those sort of secrets, not now, not his, and the realisation hits her like a Thunderbird in flight.

"Would she?"

Gordon’s eyes go wide. “Would it matter if she did?”

She juts her chin out, her hands tightening into fists. A battle stance. “I don’t know. Perhaps.”

There’s a long moment of silence, the two of them looking at each other over a pile of Penelope’s crumpled clothing. It probably looks ridiculous. It probably is ridiculous. She’s ridiculous. Guilt burns at her throat, at the backs of her eyes, and what is she even  _ doing _ it’s none of her  _ business _ \--

Perhaps her poker face isn’t as good as she thinks it is, because she sees the moment that Gordon’s expression softens. 

"Not guilty, then,” he says, perfectly casual, and that just makes the guilt burn worse. “But let me tell you, there was this thing she had with Scott and these boots --"

"No. No, don't -- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know why I even --" Penelope takes a deep, shuddering breath, and then Gordon’s there, warm hands rubbing up and down her arms, warm eyes looking steadily into her own. “I’m afraid no one is going to take us very seriously, you know.”

“No one has ever taken me seriously in my  _ life _ , Pen. I’m an  _ expert _ .”

“Well I’m not.” She shakes her head, even as she leans into him. “I’ve not the faintest idea what comes next.”

"Hey. It's ok. This is -- it's new. We're gonna figure it out. Promise."

She laughs against his chest, "Now who's the one making promises."

“Hey, what can I say.” He grins down at her. "I'm a keeper, me."

"Mmmm," she hums, then grins back, bright and sudden, as she tugs at his hand and pulls him unsteadily toward the door. "Come on!"

He staggers against the dresser just long enough to grab a t-shirt that he struggles to pull over his head one handed as Penelope drags him out into the now empty corridor. "Wait, where are we going --"

"Where I'm always going darling.” She drops his hand long enough to allow him to dress himsellf, then steps smartly toward the sound of laughter and life that’s making its way up from the kitchen. "To make an entrance."


	3. Requiescant in Pace

**130359 Ex-NASA Training Facility. Texas, USA.**

“Dad bought this?”

Alan gazes up in awe at the old module. The Tracy Industries symbol stamped into its aluminium side is bleached from the years it’s spent sitting in the Texas sun and John watches, his arms folded, as his little brother stretches up to run his hands across the faded logo. The paint flakes and splits under his fingers, and they come away dusty and stained faintly red.

“Dad bought a lot of things,” he says. “Was just a bit of space junk when he found it. Brains did the work.”

“Brains  _ always  _ does the work.”

John bristles at that, only slightly, but enough for Alan’s sideways glance to turn into a wince.

“Didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah you did, but nevermind.”

“No, I --”

“Alan, do you know what this is?”

Alan wipes his palms against his shorts, shrugs, then sneezes violently into the crook of his elbow.

“Rotten old space training facility? Maybe a vacuum,” he says, then grins. “Geddit?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Alan huffs, lower lip jutting out, and John finds himself squeezing his own biceps a little tighter. 

“You’re no fun, Johnny.” 

“Remember who brought you out here?” He pitches his voice up, and throws his hands in the air. “Oh John you’re the  _ best,  _ you’re my  _ favourite _ , I’ll do all your cleaning rotations for the  _ year _ !”

“Did  _ not _ say that last one.”

“It was implied.”

“Uh huh, sure, if you say so -- hey, do you remember these?” Alan scoops something small and cracked from the dusty ground and holds it up to the light. “These were so cool oh my god I had these on my ceiling when I was a kid --”

John remembers the solar panels, of course. He’d been the one to tape them to the charcoal space station above Alan’s bed, balanced unsteadily on Scott’s bony shoulders and under instruction from Virgil who insisted they should catch the sunset  _ just right _ . He could hardly have forgotten, it was practically yesterday.

He sort of, rather, very much, wishes it had been.

“Alan.”

“Sorry, yes, sorry.” He pockets the shard of the panel and bounces on his toes. “What  _ is _ it?” 

“Anti-grav chamber. It was the first thing dad showed me, back when I first started out. I threw up all over his shoes and he got so  _ mad _ ." John takes a breath, mentally counts his next words out just to make sure they’re right. “I thought it might be time you had a go.”

“You’re  _ kidding _ !” Alan swivels round, his jaw dropping, unlaced trainers scuffing craters into the dirt. “For  _ real _ ?”

It wasn’t yesterday that the three of them had hung Alan's childhood constellations, it’s been years. Ten of them, and the five year old with the gappy grin and the space station on his ceiling has grown into a teenager with stars in his eyes that look all too real. 

“It’s a hell of a long way to come to pull a prank, wouldn’t you say?”

“I thought you were just gonna, y’know, show me around?” Alan beams, and the stars brighten and burn. “This is  _ awesome _ !”

Alan launches himself at him, thin arms tight around his waist and god, when did the kid get that strong? 

But the fierceness of his grip is not the only reason John feels faintly sick.

It’s his own damn fault, the lot of it.

He’d been the one to choose the stars and planets mobile that had hung over Alan’s cot, the one to buy him his first telescope, to show him the easiest route to the top of Tracy Island’s caldara, to teach him the names of the stars, the galaxies, the nebula and satellites and asteroids that were soon to be John’s neighbours. He’d delighted in the way Alan would curl up next to him on clear nights, his chin tucked into his knees, and just  _ listened _ . He’d only wanted someone to listen.

John just hadn’t really considered that what he was really doing, was  _ convincing _ .

He’d come down two days ago for Alan’s birthday, a new game already loaded to his tab, and been met in the hanger by Scott in full blown Commander Mode.

This was usually the point at which John would discover a sudden and urgent need to fix something extremely complicated that Scott won’t understand enough to argue with, but it was Alan’s birthday, so he’d just gritted his teeth instead.

“ _ He wants in _ ,” Scott had snapped almost before John’s feet had hit the ground. “ _ You talked him into it, you can talk him out of it _ .”

John had just stared at him blankly, wondering briefly if perhaps Brains’ new space elevator had addled more than just his stomach contents. “ _ Talk who out of what, exactly _ ? _ And happy Wednesday to you, too _ .”

Scott had only gestured to the great red behemoth behind him, and John’s heart, already struggling against his sudden descent, had sunk into his boots. 

“ _ Oh _ .”

Scott had scoffed, but John had seen the twitch in his jaw, the untidy spikes of his hair. Seen his own rising fear reflected in his brother’s eyes. “ _ Yeah. Oh. _ ”

Alan wants in, and that’s only to be expected, he’s fifteen now with the world at his feet -- except he’s a Tracy, and he’s inclined to take that all too literally. Alan wants  _ space _ . And John’s the one who’s going to give it to him. Or not.

Scott would prefer not. Scott would prefer to keep every single one of his brothers wrapped up in cotton wool and trapped on an island for all eternity, even if it meant working himself into an early grave. Maybe even especially then, if the empty scotch bottles and hollow cheeks are anything to go by. 

Scott doesn't look much like Scott anymore, but then John's been gone a while.

John’s been gone a while, and not entirely by choice. Since their dad died there’s been no-one to bring Three up on the necessary supply runs half the time, nevermind pop up just to see how John’s doing. Certainly not to do anything as frivolous as bring him home. Brains had rushed through the Space Elevator designs at a rate that would have made John pathologically terrified were it anyone else, but luckily Brains truly is a genius. He sees the things other people would never see. Brains knew John had to come down. 

John knew it too, he’d only thought he might have had just a bit more  _ time _ .

Still, Alan’s fifteen and John had had a Masters by then. Scott had had a plane, Virgil a concerto, Gordon a World Record. It’s not entirely out of the realm of probability that the baby of the family would have a rocket.

He hadn’t told Scott that. Only nodded and said, _give me a week._ _I’ll see what I can do_.

This trip is absolutely not what Scott had had in mind, but then Scott could never be accused of being  _ sly _ .

Virgil thinks this is sly. Had told him so before they set off, his brows drawn low in disapproval, and John would agree with him, he would, but Virgil doesn’t know what’s at stake here. Virgil doesn’t understand. Virgil thinks it’s all just a matter of life and death, but John, John knows it’s far, far more important than that.

“John? You okay?” The last vestiges of little kid linger in the way Alan’s voice cracks on the last word, in the duck down softness of the hair that John reaches out to ruffle. "I promise not to puke on your shoes."

“I’m fine, kiddo. Let's play astronauts.”

**310763 Tracy Island.** ****

Alan’s graduation had been the moment. The Moment, all capital letters and framed in fanfare. Scott Tracy’s greatest success story, complete. Finished.  _ Done. _ All his brothers are safe and legally,  _ finally, _ adults. His father standing tall and smiling down on them all once again. The Hood’s imprisoned, the Chaos Crew long gone.

It had been, in a word, perfect.

It had lasted three days.

“Thunderbird Three, status?”

The interference that has knocked out the freighter’s communications is no match for the combined powers of Brains, John and Eos, but even so there’s a scratchy quality to Alan’s voice when he answers. It makes him sound young. It makes him sound scared. His hologram warps and twists in the centre of the comms pit as he struggles with Three’s controls against the miniature gravity well thrown up by the other ship's collapsing nuclear engines. Scott’s fingers flex in time with the alarms, with the static.

“No reply, control. Going EVA to attempt extraction.”

“FAB. Stay on Comms.” 

“Alan, I don’t think --”

“It’ll be  _ fine _ , Scott.” Alan’s image freezes halfway through an eye roll, then reappears, board in hand. “I got this.”

“Stick to the mission, Three.”

Alan seems to balk, and maybe it’s the static but maybe it isn’t. “FAB, control.”

His hologram fizzes out of existence, only for its cold blue glare to be replaced by his father’s grey one. They’re on opposite sides of the desk, Scott pacing the edges of the pit while his father runs the mission, but the distance between them feels so great he might as well be up there with Alan, wrestling an uncommunicative freighter away from the edge of disaster. It might be preferable. It would definitely be preferable. This, this is nothing less than torture.

He’d had a bad feeling about this from the off. Some nasty little tickle right at the back of his neck as the call had come in and Alan had sat down and “ _ How about I take this one, kids?” _

Scott had been there, the last time his father had taken a mission. Scott had watched. Scott’s watching now, and that tickle has turned into a flame, fierce and frightening and warning him that  _ something’s wrong, something’s  _ wrong.

Who uses nuclear engines in 2063? Who, with the money and the ability to send off a space freighter, would use such an unsteady fuel, such pathetic comm systems? Every inch of it stinks worse than Gordon’s wetsuit after a week underwater, and his dad’s just watching. Just watching Alan. In Three, and now not. Now skipping through space on that  _ damn  _ skateboard and they’d laughed -- they’d laughed so hard when Brains had shown them, hadn’t they? They’d thought it was  _ funny _ . A teenage boy and a skateboard and the blinding, choking vacuum of space.

Dad’s watching, and Scott’s burning, and there’s nothing funny about it now.

“Uh -- T-Thunderbird Three to control?” 

Scott spins on the spot, and despite the wavering edges of the hologram he can see the death grip Alan has on his shattered board, the unnatural twist of his hips. He doesn’t answer his father, doesn’t even remember he’s there, only watches the bob of Alan’s throat. The crack in his visor. There’s a crack in his visor.

“I have -- I have a --”

There’s a hand at his shoulder, an alarm blaring, someone -- someone’s demanding assistance and it sounds like him. It sounds like him but it isn’t, it can’t be, because all he can do is stand there, frozen and _not now. Not now, not now, not now._ He can hear John, not up on Five, not where he should be, where he _would_ be, but right in his ear, in his chest, in the thrum of the blood that’s turning to ice in his veins. _I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t stop him. You couldn’t stop him._ _You should have stopped him_.

The hologram spasms, and dies.

It’s just possible that Scott Tracy, Field Commander, dies with it.

  
  


**348,562 miles away.**

This is absolutely, totally one thousand percent  _ not _ how Alan was expecting this to go.

It had started off just -- just so  _ cool _ . His dad’s first mission back in command, and it’s  _ Alan’s _ ? It’d been like a dream come true, honestly, to have his dad on comms and man, man he’d heard him laugh when he’d acknowledged, hadn’t he?  _ Thunderbird Three is go _ , and his dad had  _ laughed  _ and yeah, yeah it’d be a dream come true if he wasn’t so totally  _ screwed _ .

“Thunderbird Three to base? Dad?” Feedback screeches through his helmet and he grits his teeth against the nasty sick feeling that comes with it. Or maybe that comes from braining himself with his own damn board. Whichever. “Base, come in. The port engine has blown, I’m stuck in the debris field with no power. Repeat, power is out. Dad, do you read me? Ugh.”

No comms, then. No Dad. Kinda lucky he’s used to that. The blinking light at his wrist, not so much. Looks like it’s not just his board he’s gonna have to hide from Brains.

It’s not easy, trying to take note of every inch of his equipment when he’s hanging onto half a gravboard at least three hundred feet from safety and with a live demonstration of the downside of nuclear physics attempting to blow his brains out, but John taught him well. John wouldn’t panic, so Alan won’t panic. Much.

Gloves, check. Boots… he twists as best he can, ignoring the throbbing pain in his lower spine that means a wicked bruise later. He can feel his feet, so at least nothing’s broken. Probably check, then. There’s another nasty scar across his chestplate, the blue scored through silver, but that’s okay too. That’s what it’s  _ for _ . He’s still breathing, puffs of little white clouds that steam up the front of his helmet then dissipate -- ah. Comms are down and no-one’s listening.

In space, no one can hear you swear.

\---

John’s smiling at him. He’s hanging upside down, tossing a ball from one hand to the other and making it look easy. It shouldn’t look easy. It didn’t look easy. Alan remembers how this went, the very first time, the little rubber ball careening through space while Alan chased after it as best he could, arms and legs flailing against the nothingness of zero G.

The first time he’d caught it John had whooped, thrown himself backward into a perfect flip and --

_ Can you teach me how to do that? _

_ I’m going to teach you  _ everything.

“Don’t you think, Alan?” he says instead, and Alan blinks, his eyelids heavy, his brain strangely slow.

“Think?”

“That it’s incredible. The Alaskan Wood frog. It can freeze up to 90% of its body over winter and, hey! Come spring, it defrosts like new.”

“I -- I dun’ care about frogs, John.” Something’s bright at the corner of Alan’s vision. Bright and getting brighter, and John’s smile seems to grow right along with it, but his edges are all fuzzy. Warped and spotted red, like a man viewed through ice. 

“You’re not a frog, Alan.” And that -- that doesn’t seem like something John would say, but he presses forward, his nose against the plexiglass and it’s cracked, John’s face is cracked wide open, space pale and lips drawn back. Alan tries to yelp, to scuttle away, but his limbs are like lead and his lungs -- god how are his lungs burning when he’s so damn cold? The thing that wears John’s face leers down at him and how didn’t he notice, before? The torn uniform, the glass-grey eyes, the blood-red spittle when it sneers -- “You’re not going to wake up.”

It’s mouth opens, huge and dark, and Alan can only stare, only stare helplessly at the constellations down its throat and --

_ Dad, I want my Dad. I want -- _

_ I want -- _

A voice, loud and insistent in the darkness, and the creature dissipates into stardust.

Alan swallows, thick and dry, and whispers, “Scott?”

“Tracy? Hey, come on kid. Come on, I got you.”

Alan struggles to throw his heavy head around and peers after the source of the voice. It’s kinda blurry, an amorphous blob of white and silver with tendrils that seem to reach out and grab at him. Another monster in the dark. “G’off!”

“No can do, your brother’s so mad, kid. I gotta get you safe before he bursts a vessel hey?”

Alan blinks, tries to clear some of the shadows from his vision. He knows that voice, has heard it plenty of times when playing online melees. John. It reminds him of John. “Ridley?”

John sent Ridley.

Oh, he is  _ so mad _ .

“Yeah,” she sounds relieved. “Yeah, Alan, it’s me.”

Red fills his vision again, but this time it’s different, better, brighter, and he feels his sluggish heart rate pick up just from the sight of his ship in all her glory. They all say that red means danger, but it’s never meant that to Alan. Not once. It means safety.

“Rescuing me?”

“You can thank me later.” O’Bannon has a grapple attached to Three’s belly, Alan can see the burning freighter reflecting off it as she pulls him along after her. “Now save your breath, kid okay? Save your damn breath, and let’s get you home.”

“Home,” he manages, and there she is. Bright and brilliant. “Home.”

**Re-entry T+0:19:26**

There would have been a time, once, when the sight of a stranger piloting Three into dock with Five would have filled Jeff with dread. A time when it would have meant failure, at best, and disaster at worst. Now he had little time to think much of anything about the girl with the dark buzzcut whose image shone from Alan’s portrait, the GDF issue suit glaring white compared to the darker blues he prefers.

He let Scott speak to her, thank her, as John took control of Three for reentry and “ _ Really, don’t mention it, International Rescue. I owe you  _ several _. _ ”

“ _ Guess we’re rubbing off on you, Captain _ .  _ Maybe a change of career _ ?”

“ _ Don’t push it _ !”

She had laughed, and Scott had smiled, and Jeff had put the woman to the back of his mind, an anomaly for later consideration.

He’s got enough on his plate as it stands. 

Jeff sits in the middle of a nightmare. 

Around him are projected dozens, hundreds even, of mission debriefs, suit data, news reports and hospital records, and every file, every last damn data point, tells him the exact same thing; International Rescue is going to get his kids killed.

Scott stands before him, military straight, and Jeff hasn't the faintest idea where to start.

He knows what he'd do if this  _ was _ the military. The investigation, the court martial, the  _ knowingly endangered the men under his command _ and the consequences thereof, but Scott -- Scott would never.

Scott has.

Scott has, and Jeff has to know  _ why _ .

He tries to keep his voice steady, to bite down the anger and the shame and the gutwrenching terror of it all. Of John crushed by gravity and Gordon torn apart. Of his elderly mother in the firing line and Brains,  _ Brains _ , dangling from a rip cord and screaming into the void. It sounds surreal, unbelievable, and yet the evidence of his own eyes floats all around him writ large in the neon blue of the holograms and in the shadows beneath Scott’s eyes.

He’d thought Scott was overreacting, before. Panicking. It had worried him and then, and then --

Without John’s contact, without her assistance, he’d have come home only to have it shattered forever in one fell swoop, and god damn it all, but this isn’t the first time. Not by a long shot.

“Do you know what this information represents, Scott?” 

A pause. Up above them on the balcony Jeff can hear the shifting of bodies against the tiled floor and he imagines that if he looks up he’ll see three pairs of eyes peeking from between the balustrades just as he had back at the farmhouse whenever the hours and been too long and Lucy’s patience had run too thin. Scott must hear them too, because Jeff sees the way he tilts his head just slightly toward them -- in acknowledgement or warning he can’t be quite sure.

“The risks we take in the line of duty, Sir.”

Jeff raises an eyebrow. “Is that your defence?”

Scott barely reacts, only just his chin out a little further as he says, “Am I under investigation, Sir?”

Yes. No. God, what is he doing. God, but what has he  _ done _ .

“Do you think that would be appropriate?”

It’s been a lifetime since he’s done this, and, honestly, it was more likely to be Gordon or John stood before him -- headstrong and angry, taciturn and sly -- than Scott. Scott’s always been the most like him. He’s always known how to handle Scott.

Something roils in his belly. Scott says nothing. 

_ Name, rank, number. Give them nothing else Tracy, you understand me? Give them nothing. _

Scott’s  _ always _ been the most like him.

“All right, Flight Lieutenant. At ease.” Jeff reaches into the cubby beside his desk and pulls out a less-than-full bottle of whiskey and two glasses before decanting a generous measure into both. Then he scrubs a hand across his aching eyes, and calls one of the myriad files closer. He taps on the image of a man, half machine by the looks of it, and a list of events that make Jeff’s skin crawl. “Explain this.”

Scott blinks, a brief flash of surprise, before schooling his features back into perfect neutrality. “The Mechanic. He rebuilt the ZeroX.”

Jeff tucks that thought away for later consideration, and taps a nail against a tiny, torn, Thunderbird Four.

“A friend of yours then, is he?”

“It wasn’t --” Scott stops, swallowing hard as though the words he was about to say would choke him. “He was under the Hood’s control at that time, Sir.”

“Ah, yes, our old buddy.” Jeff swipes the file into the ether and leans forward on the desk, his fingers steepled together. “At what point did you decide International Rescue ought to be a branch of Law Enforcement? Or was that the Lady Creighton-Ward’s helpful contribution to a rescue organisation?”

There’s an indignant noise from the balcony, followed by a hushed snap of  _ leave it _ . 

Jeff does not intend to leave it. “What were you playing at, Scott?”

“What?” Scott’s staring now, eyes wide, mouth gaping. "We thought he'd killed you! You can’t seriously expect we’d just -- just -- "

"And would it have mattered a damn if he had!? For the love of -- do you think I'd trade a single of one you for my life, Scott?" Jeff slams his fist down, hard enough to send the scotch spilling over the sides of the glasses. Hard enough to bring Virgil to his feet and launch him down the stairs two at a time, though to whose defence Jeff hasn’t a clue. “Do you think for one moment that would have been  _ worth _ it?”

Scott's jaw twitches. "With all due respect, Sir, that was never your call to make."

“It wasn’t yours, either!”

The two of them stare each other down, and for the first time in his life, Jeff finds himself having to be the one looking up. For the first time in his life, he’s the one to break.

“Enough, Scott. Enough.” He pushes a glass across the deck, and Scott peers into it, Jeff watches the way his reflection twists in the amber liquid, static that isn’t. “Drink.”

“I’m on du --”

“Drink, and shut up. We will talk about this  _ later _ . Go, find your brother.” He looks up to where John and Gordon are still lingering, knuckles white against the bannisters. “That goes for all of you. Go outside, get some air.” Virgil moves toward him, but his eyes are on Scott and regardless Jeff isn’t sure he can bear the coddling right now. “Virgil. Go.”

“Dad --”

“Out _ side _ , boys. Alan needs you.”

That, at least, seems to spur them into action. John heads down to the hanger where he’s left Alan under Brains’ careful ministrations, while Virgil half steers Scott in the direction of the doors. Gordon sprints ahead of them as had so often been the way, before. He can’t say as usual. He doesn’t know what usual looks like anymore, only that it’s neon blue and cuts him to the bone.

There’s a soft sigh from behind him followed by a hand on his shoulder squeezing gently down. He leans into it for half a moment, closes his eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.

“You could use some air too, you know.”

Jeff shakes his head, feels the cuff of his mother’s sweater against his cheek and breathes her in. “Not sure there’s a place for me out there right now.”

“Nonsense.” She helps him to his feet and walks him over to the picture window. The sun is low in the sky, the clouds tinged red, and the haze left in Three’s wake catches the light and glows pink overhead.

“Is it?” He shakes his head again, leaning against the glass to steady himself as all five boys appear at the poolside. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. No, Mom. You know it isn’t.”

His mother hums, then rests her head against his shoulder. “That’s the problem, Jeff. You left without telling any of us what you wanted International Rescue to become. We had to make that up as we went along, and a damn fine job those boys have done of it too if you ask me.”

“Maybe.” He pauses, takes a deep breath and watches as Virgil ruffle’s Alan’s hair and the way he holds on to his shoulder a little bit longer than he needs to. How Scott’s not laughing and Gordon’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. How John, even now, even in daylight, only sits with his toes dipped into the shallow end and turns his face up to the invisible stars. “Is it worth it?”

His mother shifts, perhaps a shrug or perhaps something else, he wouldn’t know, he’s not looking at her.

“Now that, you’ll have to ask them.”

  
  
  



	4. Idolatry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! I hope anyone reading is enjoying this take on post-canon Tracy drama!  
> Just a heads -up, the end of this chapter contains a leeeeeetle bit of smutty stuff. Not all the ins and outs, if you will, but heavy implications. If you're not into that I've marked the point at which it starts with [*****] so you can avoid it.

**Sunday 5th August 2063. Creighton-Ward Manor. Hampshire, England.**

The entrance hall of Creighton-Ward Manor echoes with the sound of her footsteps as she paces between the pale walls. Above her hang Lady Penelope’s long dead relatives, watching over her. Blue eyes turned rheumy from the passage of time seeming to follow her as she completes another circuit. South, south west, west.

Kayo doesn’t feel uncomfortable often, doesn’t really have time for it in her line of work. She’s always considered herself more a get in, kick ass, take names for the families sort of girl. Social anxiety is for other people, the sort of people who give a damn about social niceties in the first place.

Lady Penelope cares about social niceties. 

Maybe that’s why the wait’s making Kayo twitchy. 

Parker eventually returns from the bowels of the manor and beckons for him to follow her. They pass through a half dozen luxuriously decorated rooms, but the furniture in many of them is covered in dust covers, the ever-watchful portraits darkened into anonymity. It’s a hell of a big house for one young woman and her butler, that’s for sure.

Eventually they reach a lighter, brighter part of the house where her Ladyship's penchant for all things pink and pug-like seems to chase the older, darker, past away. Parker opens a final door, and Kayo is greeted by Lady Penelope sitting, legs crossed, on a pale satin sofa, a polite smile on her lips.

“Kayo! How lovely, do take a seat. I’ll have Parker bring us some tea.”

Kayo shakes her head. “Not a social call I’m afraid, Lady Penelope. I need your help.”

“All the more reason for the tea then, wouldn’t you say?”

“Milady?”

“Please, Parker. The new blend I brought up from London, if you don’t mind. We may need something to sharpen our senses.” Parker disappears into the corridor with a nod, and Lady Penelope moves to perch herself on the edge of the sofa, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “I am at your service, of course. What seems to be the issue?”

Kayo hesitates.

The last time she’d seen Lady Penelope had been when she’d left the Island after Alan’s graduation. She’d looked like family then, laughing at Scott and hugging Alan and whispering fevered goodbyes to Gordon that had sent his ears red as John’s hair, but in the here and now she looks like what she is - a colleague, a spy, a woman who prides herself on being an unknown quantity in IR’s operations - and suddenly Kayo finds herself doubting her decision to bring this to her door.

Who else’s door _is_ there, though, and Kayo -- Kayo’s at a loss.

“Jeff’s suspended operations.”

Only the slightest widening of her eyes gives away Lady Penelope’s reaction, her voice totally steady as she replies, “For what purpose?”

Well, that’s sort of the question, isn’t it.

She can understand the logic of it, or she could, at least. Alan hadn’t suffered much worse than a touch of frost bite at the tip of his nose, but it had been close, way, way too close, and combined with the distress they all tended to feel at the failure of a rescue -- a week off had sounded good. Nice, even.

Except he hadn’t said a week. Hadn’t really said much of anything at all, other than --

“He wants to examine the safety standards, look at all the standard operating procedures --” Kayo pauses as Parker reappears, teapot in hand, and waits for him to pour and shuffle out again before she continues. “He’s really mad at Scott.”

“You say that as though being ‘mad at Scott’ isn’t the general state of affairs on Tracy Island.”

“No, I mean --” Kayo sighs, and drops her teacup back into the saucer with a clatter that makes Lady Penelope wince. “He doesn’t, he doesn’t seem to _get_ it. Any of it. International Rescue was his idea, his dream, and yet --”

"And yet," says Lady Penelope gently, "the reality is somewhat different to what he was expecting?"

"I don't know what he was expecting." Kayo huffs, frustration setting her hands into fists. "First he's acting like Scott's some sort of GDF commander sending us out against our will, then he's pulling every log he can find, he's pulled John off Five and _that's_ gone down like a Fischler Industries flight let me tell you. It's like he's only just realised, what we do, it's _dangerous_."

"The man has just spent eight years alone in an uninhabitable area of the far solar system. Perhaps he's just struggling a little with the status quo."

Kayo huffs. "You think? And then there was this thing with Braman and Gordon and the scar and --”

Lady Penelope starts, only slightly, a catch of the breath that only someone with Kayo's training would notice. Kayo notices and Lady Penelope knows it, covering the moment by tapping her teaspoon gently against the fine china teacup, once, twice, three times.

It sounds like a code, so it probably is. Somewhere in the distance, Parker coughs.

“The scar?” she says, nothing to her tone but faint interest.

“Yeah, he’s got this scar right --” Kayo reaches back over her right shoulder, then stops dead as Lady Penelope arches one perfect brow. “You know about the scar.”

The other brow rises in time with the teacup as her Ladyship takes a leisurely sip. “Presumably his father did not?”

“He does now.” 

“I see.” Lady Penelope narrows her eyes over the rim of her teacup. “Would your father not have a better chance of influencing him than I?” Kayo sees the corner of her mouth tick up. “He has seen me in a rather less than professional light, since his return.”

Kayo doesn’t blush, but it’s a close run thing. She hadn’t _personally_ witnessed the world’s most awkward breakfast table, but she’d heard enough from Alan -- fluro-pink and muttering semi-hysterically about thighs and buttons -- to get the jist of things.

“Yeah, about that.” Kayo takes a breath. “I’m sorry. If I uh -- if I offended you. That day. With the-- with the Gordon, thing. It was none of my business.”

Penelope puts her cup down and offers what Kayo now realises is her first genuine smile of the afternoon. “Not a phrase you use often.”

Kayo shrugs, and smiles in return. “Guess I was caught unawares -- though, for the record? I think you’ve traumatised Alan for _life_.”

That earns her a real grin. “Oh, _excellent_.”

“Anyway,” Kayo continues. Penelope bounces forward a little bit on the sofa, all ears. “I don’t, that is, I haven’t come hoping you’ll convince Jeff to cut the boys some slack. Not really. I’ve come about his plan."

“So there is one, then?” 

Kayo snorts. “You’ve spent too much time around Gordon.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Penelope says mildly. “But do go on.”

“Jeff wants to get back involved in the business side of things. He’s looked at the paperwork and, honestly?” Kayo shrugs. “I don’t think Scott’s looked at any of it twice in eight years. Not that he’s had _time_ , but --”

“But as long as the iridium keeps coming?” Penelope says, and nods. “I’ve had some limited contact with the board, but the Tracy name really is more of a symbol than anything else in today’s economy.” She sits back, apparently satisfied. “I could arrange Mr Tracy’s return, perhaps an honorary role at first, until he feels up to more?”

“I don’t think Jeff really does honorary.”

“You may have a point there.”

“And anyway -- Jeff wants the boys involved. I think --” Kayo takes a deep breath, and swallows down the sense of betrayal her next words cause her. “I _worry_ that he plans to take the boys out of the field. Permanently.”

There’s a long pause, then, “I see.”

Her Ladyship picks up a little china bell between two fingers and rings it gently. Parker appears in the doorway almost immediately, as though waiting for the excuse. Which, Kayo knows, is pretty much totally the case.

“Yes, Milady?”

“Parker, be a dear will you and arrange a meeting with the Tracy Industries board. Mr Tracy would like his sons to be more involved in the business aspect of things, and we should do our best to assist.”

“Penelope!”

Parker looks askance at her outburst, but Kayo’s starting open mouthed at Lady Penelope. “You can’t be serious? Scott, in a boardroom? The windows will be out in an hour!”

“I’m very well aware of that,” Penelope agrees, “but I am not the one who requires convincing. It sounds to me as though Mr Tracy needs a reminder of where his son’s strengths lie, wouldn’t you say?”

“You mean --”

“I _mean_ ,” Penelope lowers her voice, leaning forward. “That the Tracy Industries board don’t have a clue what’s about to hit them.”

\---

One door closes, and another opens to reveal a faintly dishevelled gentleman who tumbles out of her great-great grandmother’s china cabinet only to collapse on the opposite end of the chaise in a cloud of dust. 

Really, she must have words with Parker.

“I can’t believe I had to hide in a cupboard.”

“It’s a cabinet, Gordon, and where did you tell them you were again?”

Gordon pouts, and she resists the urge to rub the grey smut from his cheek.

“Belize.”

“Well then. I did tell you to stay in the bedroom.” She smiles, laying an arm along the back of the chaise until she can flick at an unruly lick of hair at the nape of his neck. “You’re usually so obliging.”

She expects a leer for that comment, but he doesn’t even look at her, his eyes fixed on Kayo’s half drunk Darjeeling.

“Yeah, but.”

“But?”

He drops his gaze further, down to the bands he wears at his wrist, to the diver’s watch and silent comms unit. It’s been silent all weekend, and that, Penny knows, is a first. And, it would seem, not the brotherly act of charity she’d previously assumed. “I want to know what’s going on too, Pen.”

“And you thought what, that I’d keep it from you?”

His mouth works soundlessly.

She nods. “I thought as much.”

“Nah, c’mon Penny. It’s not like that -- it’s _not_ \--it’s just --” He lifts his arms and lets them fall slack at his sides. “I just don’t know what to make of it, I guess. I thought we were doing what Dad _wanted_. We --” He swallows, and she’s at his side in an instance, all pretence at wounded pride swept away by the downturned corner of his mouth. “I thought he’d be proud.”

Her heart aches to reassure him, because who _wouldn’t_ be proud? What sort of man wouldn’t stand in incredulous awe at the sight of his children, all of his children, working constantly for the betterment of others? International Rescue are _heroes_ , not just to those they’ve saved, but to millions of others around the globe who know, _know_ , that on their darkest days, when all else has failed them, the Thunderbirds _won’t_.

But then Penelope remembers the first time she’d seen that scar, that scar and all its dozens of silvered siblings, a spiderweb of suffering against golden skin. She remembers running her fingers as lightly as she dared over the puckered skin, still pink and puffy and pockmarked from stitches that had yet to completely disappear, and she remembers, she knows, the dread in her veins, the fear that no pride will ever quite entirely dissolve. 

She wants to reassure him, but there’s a part of her, secret and selfish as it may be, that sympathises with Jeff Tracy.

Instead she presses what she hopes is a reassuring kiss to his temple before rising to her feet with a pat to his knee. A certain, steadying pat. The sort that promises that this will all be sorted out and have no fear and do put the kettle on Parker, there’s a dear. She almost means it.

“Well then, I suppose we’d best ensure he is.”

\---

“This is a functionally terrible idea right?"

“If you’re asking about that bowtie, then uh, _hard_ yes.”

Virgil plucks at the fabric around his neck, grunting in frustration as the edges fray against his collar. It’s been a really, _really_ , long time since he’d last had to truss himself up like a chicken to _impress_ anyone. His ‘bird is usually _more_ than enough for that, but she’s locked up tight in the hanger along with all her siblings, kept in the dark until his father decides to set her free. Virgil’s always felt a bond with Two, but never more so than now.

None of his decade old neckties seem to _quite_ stretch around his neck, the shiny, pointed shoes pinch his toes, and the silver sheen to his suit jacket makes him look a bit like some antique glitter ball, but it comforts him that it could, possibly, be worse.

Alan gazes morosely at their twin reflections and tugs at the edge of his cropped jacket. Alan had needed the entire _outfit_ , brand new, a boy’s first suit, and Virgil might be grousing that the tightness of his buttons, but Alan’s… well, fashions have moved on, in the time they’ve been on the Island. 

“I look like a craft project gone wrong,” he mutters, flapping hopelessly at a satin ruffle.

“You’ll detract from my bow tie, at least.”

“Ugh, _unfair_. John’s suit --”

“John’s suit was purchased by Lady Penelope from the finest tailor in London. Yours is what Grandma could get at short notice.”

Alan stops fussing and drops his hands to his sides. “Why does Grandma hate me.”

Normally this is the point at which Virgil would reassure the baby of the family that it’s just a _party_ , and it’s for _Dad_ , and that no harm will come of Alan being forced into a funny outfit for a few hours, but Virgil has an artist’s soul and the satin shirt is a hideously pale, moonbeam blue.

He grunts again.

“God, there are gonna be _photographers_.”

“Guys! Guys, you ready, we gotta -- whoa, _Alan_ !” Gordon prances into the room, his own suit suspiciously well fitted and his bow tie a perfect, sunny yellow. “Looking _good_.”

Alan groans. “I wish I was dead.”

Gordon taps his nose, grossly gleeful in the face of a brother’s misfortune. “Careful what you wish for, Dad’s insisting on piloting.”

Virgil pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to breathe through the migraine he can already feel pressing at the back of his eyeballs.

“Mr Safety First?” Alan scoffs, and the throbbing gets louder. “Right, sure.”

He’d never admit as much to Alan of course, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the world’s ugliest fashion statement is their grandmother’s version of a punishment. They’ve all been touchy since Dad put the kibosh on missions, the Island alone not quite big enough to contain the frustrated energies of five young men used to travelling from adrenaline rush to adrenaline rush at twice the speed of sound. John has taken himself off to his room like a recalcitrant teenager, only appearing to scowl palely at anyone who interrupts his reading over lunch. Gordon has spent a considerable amount of time out in some new ‘research’ facility that seems to carry with it the smell of expensive women’s perfume, and Virgil’s drowned his frustrations in paint and ink and listening to Scott swear at the news. Alan’s been a _brat,_ stamping about, playing games til dawn and generally doing his best to get on everybody else's strained nerves _._ At least it feels that way. Virgil knows in his heart of hearts that it’s only because of the misplaced guilt Alan feels for the mission that went so wrong, he knows that. But Dad doesn’t, and the strained relationship his choice has left in its wake-- it hurts.

“Can you be nice tonight, Al?” he says with a sigh. “Dad is really excited about it.”

If possible, Alan looks even more miserable. “Yeah, of course. Yeah.”

“Seriously though.” Gordon picks up Virgil’s discarded tie and stands on his tip toes to thread it back through his collar as best he can. “It’s not all bad, Penny’s organised the party and you know that means it’s gonna be real -- Jeez, Virg, you’ve got a neck like a bulldog, you know that?”

“You’re a real flirt, Gordy.”

“Everyone needs a skill.” Gordon fiddles with the silk, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth, his brow creased in concentration, then, “tah-dah! Almost passable!”

“Whoop-de-do,” Virgil drawls, pushing an errant hair into place. “It’ll do I guess.”

Gordon slaps him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

“What are you so cheerful about,” Alan grouses as the three of them head out of the rather overcrowded bathroom and out toward where Tracy One waits to take them across the ocean. “I thought you’d be missing your turtles.”

“Missing my --”

Virgil narrowly avoids rolling his eyes. “Yeah, Gordon. Those rare sea turtles, how are they?”

“The --?” Gordon’s eyes narrow, then widen in realisation. “Oh! The turtles. My turtles. In Belize. They’re great, y’know -- really -- coming out of their… shells.”

“Ugh,” Alan grumbles, Tracy One and the rest of the family coming into view. “I wish I was old enough to drink.”

Virgil drops a hand to his shoulder and squeezes, just as their father turns to greet them. He’s still too thin, his suit is one of John’s with the sleeves rolled up, but he doesn’t need the dark glasses anymore so it’s obvious, the way his gaze narrows as it lands on each of them. Assessing, judging. _Worrying, he’s just worrying_.

“Don’t worry kid,” he mutters under his breath. “I got you.”

\---

**August 11th, 2063. Tracy Industries, New York City, NY.**

Tracy Tower cuts through the skyline like a knife, all sharp glass edges mirrored to reflect the sky the great Jeff Tracy had loved so well. Did love, still. He’s alive. Back. Here.

There have been more than a few nervous faces around since the news broke, and for good reason.

Farm boys don’t become billionaires by accident. 

The central plaza is a hive of activity, besuited worker bees buzzing back and forth with armfuls of silverware white the Queen Bee herself watches from the dais set up at the front of the main building, her dress a flash of steel grey against the glasswork, her spine as straight and unbendable as the structure behind her.

He’s never met Jeff Tracy, but there’s no way he can be anything _like_ as unnerving as Her Ladyship, surely.

The CFO bolts past, a white linen napkin pressed to his sweaty upper lip, and spits out a frantic, “T minus ten minutes, everyone! Go, go, go!”

Someone presses a microphone into his arms and gestures wildly in the direction of the stage.

“Set it up will you? Oh God, the banner’s crooked. Wilson! _Wilson!_ Are you out of your damn _mind_?!”

They bolt away, arms flapping at where the great “Welcome Home” banner hangs fourteen degrees off horizontal, and he turns to the stage.

Her Ladyship smiles down at him, and sweat sparks beneath his stiff collar.

“Hello,” she says. “Is that for me? Do be a dear and pop it over there won’t you --” she pauses, and her brow creases in consternation. It makes her look young, sweet even. He knows better. “I’m terribly sorry, do I know you?”

For a moment his blood runs cold, but there’s no way, no way at all -- he’s been careful, hasn’t he? No one ever pinned it on him. He’s got one of those faces, that’s all. 

“Oh, no. No I’m afraid not, just got one of those faces.”

She hums politely, but the crease between her brows never entirely dissipates. He tries another tack. “I _really_ don’t think I’d forget meeting you.”

“Oh, well,” she laughs, flattered. “I don’t suppose I can blame -- oh! Oh look, the car’s here!”

The frenzy of activity stops as swiftly as if someone had pressed pause on the holovision, and every head turns as one to watch the long, dark nose of the CEO’s limousine turning between the steel entrance gates. Behind the car there’s a mob of flashing lights and hollering voices, but the car itself is silent. A predator approaching its prey.

There’s an irony to that, probably. He’ll dwell on that later. For now he just watches, as slack jawed and pathetic as the rest of them, as the car glides to a halt and the doors open.

For a moment it feels as though the whole world is holding its breath.

In his pocket, a comm unit chimes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**********

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It all seems to be going rather well, thus far. 

Mr Tracy had followed her own opening remarks with a short speech and the sort of cheerful grace designed to set even the most nervous of his employees at ease, and since then the champagne has flowed freely, Tracy Plaza alive with laughter and chatter all topped by the dulcet strains of a string quartet. And of course there’s the way Gordon Tracy has her pressed up against the glass wall of an executive office as he rucks her dress up over her thighs and, yes. It’s all rather lovely. 

She loves the way his hands stutter as they reach the bare skin of her hips, and the sound he makes -- oh, but she could happily _wreck_ him over and over. She pulls back, ever so slightly, her lip between her teeth, to admire her handiwork. His eyes are blown huge and dark with desire, his skin flushed, and damp curls of hair stick to his forehead where sweat beads at his hairline.

She commits it to memory, the sight of him, the sound and the taste and the thrill of lust and power thrumming through her fingertips when she threads them into his hair and _pulls_ . It isn't prim and it certainly isn't proper, but oh, is it _wonderful_. 

"Ugh, Penn _y_ ," he whines, dragging out the sound of her name as he moves to cup her bottom with one hand, the other hooking under her knee. "I thought you were a lady."

She pouts, all attempts at innocence ruined as he lifts her up, up until she's digging the heel of her stiletto into the curve of his backside.

"Well darling, this dress is _very_ unforgiving." She grinds against him, the fabric of his suit rough against sensitive flesh, and Gordon drops his forehead against the cool glass with a groan.

"You're gonna be the death of me."

"Already?" Penelope grins. "I have _barely_ begun. Although --"

She reaches behind him, an action slightly more awkward than seductive, if she’s being utterly honest with herself, and pulls the blade she keeps tucked into her heel free before flinging it away. It lands on a nearby desk with a metallic _clink_ , and Gordon peers over her head, side-eyeing her when he sees the light reflecting off the well-sharpened edge.

"Scary." He sounds impressed. He should be.

She simply smiles. " _Spy._ "

Gordon laughs, and if she’d thought he was beautiful before it’s nothing compared to now. “Do you know,” he says, nuzzling into her neck, his smile curving at the shell of her ear, "you're the best looking sea turtle I've ever seen?"

She snorts, and it’s terribly undignified, but here she is, bare-bottomed and crushed up against a window and dignity isn’t top of her priorities right now, not in the least. "Really Gordon, with lines like that it's a miracle you're still single."

"Oh," and he's the one with all the cards now, sunshine smile turned sinful, his fingers bruise tight beneath her thighs as he lifts her. Condensation blooms on the glass where her bare skin sticks. "Single am I?"

Her pulse is racing, hot and fast, and she feels it as her heart skips, stops, thuds back to life at the curl of his mouth.

"That depends," she half breathes, half gasps, "on what you think."

"I'll show you what _I_ think."

Her head lolls to one side as he peppers kisses along the line of her throat, the edge of her collarbone. Through the wall of windows she sees New York, a riot of neon and white, and there are photographers down there, she knows it. Just as she knows the reach of their lenses. One of Gordon's hands slips between them and -- oh. _Oh._

"Wh-what floor?"

She hadn’t -- she hadn’t taken the time, before. Hadn’t thought it through, not one bit. Just pulled Gordon into the lift by the lapels of his jacket and slapped blindly at the buttons as he’d followed her lead.

He follows her now, too, always, always following her lead, his hand stilling, his breath hot against her lips. "Why - ?"

"No, no don't -- don't stop." Again she blindly reaches out, her fingers scrabbling against the steel desk where the knife had dropped until they make contact with something she can use. A click and the scrape of metal against metal, and the architects’ desk lamp glares out of the window beside them, bright enough to foil any paparazzo lucky or intrepid enough to risk a picture. 

“All right?” The strain in Gordon’s voice is crystal clear, but he’s hovering still, his face inches from her own, his eyes bright with desire mixed with concern. Penelope smiles, presses her forehead against his own and slips her hand from the lamp to the buckle of his trousers.

“Perfect.”

They stare at each other a moment longer, a moment too long, because even as she feels the words she shouldn’t say bubbling at the tip of her tongue there’s a bang and a groan from somewhere out in the corridor and then --

The distant sounds of the party flood in through the now open door, and with them comes a dishevelled looking figure who has Penelepe frantically tugging at her dress and Gordon mouthing silent recriminations at the ceiling.

“Shit -- shit -- sorry, has anyone seen the bathroom I feel kinda --- _Shit_!”

Alan stares, every freckle in stark relief against his clammy pale skin, at the tableau they must make and without comment of preamble retches champagne all over his shoes.

“Perfect,” Gordon grumbles. “ _Perfect._ ”


	5. The Wages of Sin

**081263, Global Defence Force Headquarters, New York Office.**

Jeff watches wearily as Val Casey paces her office, a tab in one hand and the other pressed to her ear. He’s only heard half the conversation, more like a third, really, thanks to his throbbing head, but it’s enough to know that he hasn’t been dragged here from his hotel suite for Bloody Marys and waffles. 

Which is kind of a shame. He could kill for something to take the edge off.

Val signs off her call with a waspish, “ _ Understood _ .” and finally turns to him. Her glare is like ice, and his aching eyes almost welcome it.

“Jeff.”

“Hello, Val.”

They stare at each other -- an old game, this, and one Jeff never loses -- until she drops the tab to the desk and, without breaking eye contact, jabs at it with her finger until an image blooms, almost lifesize, in the space between them.

His boys, all of them, caught in glorious 3D as they half fell out of last night’s limousine. John at least is half hidden behind Virgil’s bulk, barely more than a flash of red hair and a white sleeve, but Gordon’s hair’s on end, his shirt untucked, eyes far away and glassy and not really at all the image Jeff would have liked to project to his company or, as it appears, the world at large.

Plus there’s vomit on Alan’s trouser leg, circled in the bright red of tabloid judgement, and Scott -- yeah Scott probably shouldn’t have punched the photographer. It always helps to have the media on your side.

“Do you want to explain,” Val says, dangerously calm, “Why I lost two men to an Andean rockfall last night, when  _ this _ is what International Rescue were doing instead?”

“International Rescue is inoperative.”

“Yes,” she sneers, “I  _ know _ . And now so do a half dozen families -- two of which are on  _ my payroll _ , Jeff.”

Guilt rises unbidden, as sour as late night whiskey chasers, but Jeff tamps it down, buries it beneath a sombre expression and a heartfelt, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Val growls, the image shattering as she leans through it. “You’re  _ sorry _ ? I don’t  _ want _ a damn apology, Jeff!”

He scowls, irritation drowning the guilt. It's  _ early _ , he has  _ things to do _ . Already he's got four board and investor meetings booked for this afternoon, and he hasn't got  _ time _ for this.

“Then if you’ll forgive me for asking,  _ Colonel _ , what exactly is it you  _ do _ want?”

Val presses forward, her eyes narrowing, all her weight turning her knuckles white where they press into the mahogany desktop. She doesn't ask the question he's expecting.

“What the hell happened to you out there, Jeff?”

He blinks. Looks down. His mother’s asked, of course, and Virgil too, but he’s put them both off with half cocked assurances and the odd bald-faced lie. It almost worries him, now, how easy it is to lie them, especially when he finds himself lacking the words to lie to Val. “That’s a pretty heavy question for a guy with a hangover, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say this was a pretty heavy situation wouldn’t you?”

Jeff concentrates on the way her wrists flex. She can win this one. She can win, but he’s nothing else to give her. “Nothing happened.”

She scoffs, but Jeff holds up a hand -- supplication, perhaps, or an order. He’s not sure he knows the difference any more.

“Nothing, Val. Eight years of it. Eight years with only the voices in my head for company. Only every mistake I’ve ever --” His head clangs like a stuck airlock, agony in every heartbeat, and he drills a knuckle into his temple, squeezes his eyes shut. His cheeks are damp. He must be sweating. A shudder like a ground quake runs through the desk and he tastes smoke. Thick and cloying and _god, there’s no air. Lucy, Lucy, there’s no air._ _Alan has no air._

The clanging rings and rings and -- there’s the scrape of glass against wood and a firm hand on his shoulder. When he opens his eyes it’s to a glass of water, Val’s pale face, and oxygen.

“Oh Jeff, Jeff I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have --”

She shouldn't have, but then, who else would? Lucy's long gone and his mother's eyes are so tired and his boys -- his  _ boys _ . He shakes his head, trying to ignore the lingering throb.

"No, no, you have -- you’ve supported me from the off, Val. I owe you an explanation.”

“All right.” She fetches her own chair from the other side of her desk and sits. “I’m listening.”

“International Rescue is my life’s work, it’s all I ever wanted and yet -- I close my eyes, Val. Every time I close my eyes all I can see are my boys. Burning. Crippled. Lost, like I was. Little Allie, Val. Lost in space! I don’t --” The quake rolls through him, through his fingers, up his arms, into the very heart of him and god help him, but he trembles with it. “The world needs International Rescue, I know that. I just don’t know if I can give the world my children. I thought I could. I thought I ought to. Then I lost them, and I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it again. Not when I’d have to watch.”

Val takes a breath, her own steady hand curling over his shaking one.

"They understand the risks, Jeff. They know."

"I thought I did, too." He shakes his head. "I'm an old fool, Val."

Val smiles, the first time she’s done so since he’s arrived. “Old, maybe, but a fool? Jeff Tracy? I can’t believe that. But Jeff do you think this is better?” She gestures to the tab. “There’s more than one type of danger for young men to get themselves into.”

He scoffs a laugh. “Don’t I know it.”

“Do you know,” Val says. “I had almost the same conversation with Scott, once. “

Jeff starts slightly. “About International Rescue?”

“About priorities,” she corrects him. “You have to think about what’s  _ right _ , Jeff. Not for my sake or the world’s sake, but for those young men. They’ve given their lives to the service of others, isn't that something to be proud of? Isn’t that worth more than drunken networking parties?”

“It wasn’t meant to be a party,” Jeff grumbles, “that girl of Hugh’s has ideas above her station.”

Val says nothing at first, just lifts an eyebrow before rising from her chair with a shake of her head.

“Scott’s just like you, you know. He didn’t listen either.”

Recognising the dismissal in her tone, Jeff follows her lead and moves to leave. “Oh ye of little faith.”

“Little faith, plenty of experience. Goodbye, Jeff. Keep me in the loop.”

She turns her back on him, her comm unit already open for another call, and Jeff has to make his own way to the door and out onto the street. The effort leaves him a little out of breath still, and he leans against the marble wall of the GDF offices for a moment to let his lungs catch up with the rest of him.

The street is swarming with people, but none of them offer him so much as a second glance. They're busy, their lives have been continuing day after day all the years he's been lost, and what's Jeff Tracy to any of them now but a chapter in a textbook, a legacy he seems set to destroy?

"Thought I'd find you here."

Scott holds out a coffee, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, an over sized green hoody pulled up over his head. "Aunt Val giving you a speech?"

Jeff scoffs, pushing off the wall to take the coffee. "I hear she makes a habit of it."

"Only when she needs to."

Jeff just hums, and turns to walk back in the direction of the hotel. He ought to take a car, but his legs won't get any stronger if he just sits on his ass all day and the city streets are flat enough. Scott still hesitates though.

"You staying here, kid?" 

"No, I'm --" Jeff hears the heaviness of Scott's sigh even from over his shoulder. "I'm sorry about last night, dad. It's just -- they were laughing at Alan and I -- I lose my cool, you know?"

A laugh, short but genuine. "Oh hell, do I ever. Is that what the outfit's about? Thought you might be feeling a little worse for wear."

"I can handle it," Scott says, then takes a long swig of his coffee. "It's a side benefit, though."

A side benefit to what, exactly, becomes clear as the two of them make their way back to the hotel. Jeff might just be another face in the crowd, alone, but when he’s with Scott the crowds seem to part before them, men in cheap business suits looking up from their comms, their jaws agape, women whispering behind cupped hands;

“ _ Is that _ ?”

“ _ Oh my god, it  _ is!”

“The whole secrecy aspect of our business didn’t last then?” Jeff asks wryly as another group, this one of chattering tourists, stop and stare. 

“Kinda hard to keep it up, especially when you’re turning up to disaster zones in a great big green behemoth of a thing.”

“Oh, so you’re blaming Virgil?”

Their hotel appears on the corner of the block. Scott laughs. “Oh no, Gordon was to blame too.”

“Now that I  _ do _ believe.”

As they get closer Jeff recognises the distinctive pink of the Creighton-Ward car parked up alongside the even more distinctive flash of a mob of paparazzi.

“What on Earth is she doing here?” he grumbles, mostly to himself though Scott answers him anyway.

“You’ve got meetings, right? Lady P’s gonna tag along, smooth the way.”

Jeff’s eyes narrow. “Like last night?”

“Oh come on, Dad. It’s hardly Lady Penelope’s fault that Alan can’t hold his drink.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Then, as they come within hailing distance, the car door opens and Parker steps out.

“Mr Tracy, sir,” he acknowledges with a nod of his head. “Are you ready to leave, or should you like to go up and change first?”

The girl doesn’t leave the car, and Jeff’s eyes skip over Parker, the crowd of shouting paparazzi, and land on Scott.

“We’ll leave now. Scott, jump in.”

Scott jumps slightly at the sound of his own name, his cooling coffee sloshing out of the cup and splashing against his wrist. “What?”

“You’re coming too.” Then, loud enough for the press to hear he adds, “If International Rescue is to be funded from Tracy Industry coffers, you ought you be there to say how it should be spent.”

“But I’m wearing --”

“Doesn’t matter what you’re wearing.” He half shoves Scott ahead of him into the backseat, ignoring the squeak of surprise from the other occupant to concentrate on the way Scott’s lips curl up, the dimple that appears in his cheek. 

“You mean?”

Parker slips into the driver’s seat and Jeff leans back against the leather, his arms folded.

“Thunderbirds are go.”

\---

Somehow over the course of the morning they’ve all gravitated to the suite Virgil and Scott are sharing, the four of them sitting, or in Alan's case lying, around in some sort of high rise high quality limbo.

Gordon's making short work of the minibar, and John finds himself plucking peanut shells from his hair more often than he'd like. Which is, for the record, never.

"Were you put on this planet specifically to drive me insane?"

"Not specifically." Gordon shrugs, his mouth full. "Lucky bonus."

"For  _ who _ ?"

"Can you  _ not _ ." Alan's voice comes from a lump of duvet curled on the floor, one pale clammy cheek all that's exposed. "I just wanna die in peace."

Gordon changes the trajectory of his next throw to crack the whimpering lump in the ear.

"It could be arranged."

"I  _ said  _ I was sorry."

John turns on Gordon, "Hasn't he suffered enough?"

"Please, my ass is a  _ work  _ of  _ art _ . Not like yours you scrawny --"

"Please," Virgil turns from where he's been holding vigil at the window and scrubs his hand through his hair. "I cannot cope with an ass comparison argument right now."

Gordon's eyebrow ticks up. "Scared you'd lose?"

"Oh for the love of --"

Whatever greater power Virgil's about to appeal to is lost in the crash of the suite door, followed immediately by what John recognises as  _ distinctly unimpressed  _ footsteps.

"Sounds like it went well," he mutters as Gordon stuffs the peanut packet down the back of the sofa and Alan attempts to roll out of the way of the oncoming storm. "Virgil?"

But Virgil is already heading off to salve whatever new disaster has over taken them while they slept, his hands held out, his brow furrowed.

"Dad? Scott? What happ --"

It isn't Scott who storms in, though. Nor is it their dad. Instead it's Penelope who stalks into the centre of the room, her colour high, her hands clenched into fists. 

Gordon's on his feet almost immediately, and honestly John himself isn't far behind him. He's known Penelope for the best part of a decade and he's  _ never  _ seen her sneer the way she is now, spinning on her heel and crossing her arms over her chest. Scott follows her, and that's almost worse, because Scott looks worried,  _ nervous _ , and it isn't Penelope who receives his hushed hiss of  _ please, just calm down okay _ ?

Gordon's eyes go wide, and then narrow, harsh as steel.

Great move, Scott.

"What's going on?" Virgil, ever the peacemaker, steps forward into the ring. "Did something happen? Lady Penelope? Scott?"

"No, no it's --"

"I'll tell you what happened." Their father's voice is low, cold, and the sound of it sets the hairs on the back of John's neck on end, has Gordon's eyes flicking from Penelope for half a moment. "That girl is trying to take over my business."

John can't help it, he laughs. " _ What _ ?"

"Dad, that isn't --"

" _ Don't  _ tell me what it is or isn't! She's just prevented a deal with a  _ great _ \--"

"With an actual  _ criminal _ , Mr Tracy!" Despite her obvious fury this is the first time John's heard Penelope speak, and he's horrified to hear the crack in her voice. "You've been gone a long time,I don't expect you to understand --"

"Don't tell me what I understand!" He roars and then Gordon's there, shoving himself between them, his face screwed up tight, his body shaking and John can't watch this. 

He never could.

"Dad," it's a snarl, "what the  _ hell _ do you think you're --"

But then Jeff's manhandling Gordon aside, his focus entirely on Penelope who glares up at him, unrepentant.

“You think just because you work for me you can take liberties --”

She shakes her head, short and sharp. “Mr Tracy, I assure you I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“Oh you don’t? My business, my  _ son _ .” He throws out an arm and for one horrible, traitorous moment, John fears he might actually  _ hit _ her. Instead he just points a shaking finger at Gordon who is now being held in place only by Alan's hands in a death grip around his ankles.

"Dad, Dad that's enough, you're tired or --"

Penelope doesn't flinch, not through any of it, only holds out her own hand to stay Virgil's approach. "No, no. It’s quite all right. Allow your father to finish.”

"You sequester yourself into my business affairs, into my legacy, you walk into  _ my family _ as though you belong there and I've had just about  _ enough _ !"

John cuts his eyes to Scott who looks, being generous, as though he wishes he could sink through the floor and back to the island.

Penelope tosses her hair over her shoulder, a move, John knows, that has struck dread into the hearts of many foolish men over the years. He hadn’t expected to see it turned on his father, but then he hadn’t expected this from him at all. “I don’t work for you, Mr Tracy. I work alongside International Rescue in whatever manner they require of me, but I receive no recompense for doing so, monetary or  _ otherwise _ .” She turns to Gordon and offers him a strained sort of smile. “I’d best take my leave, gentlemen. You know where I am if you need me.”

She sweeps from the room, every inch the aristocrat she was born, and seems to take whatever has been holding Jeff upright with her. He sinks, grey-faced, into Virgil’s arms and is placed gently down on the couch, as far from Gordon as is feasibly possible.

There’s a long, long silence, broken only by Alan, who seems to be muttering either prayers or pleas from between Gordon’s feet.

Gordon looks bereft, the eyes he turns on their father wet with betrayal. “What the  _ hell _ , Dad?”

Jeff has his forehead in one hand, the other gestures vaguely in Gordon's direction. “I’m just trying to look out for you, son.”

Gordon laughs, high and bitter. “Well uh, thanks but maybe  _ don’t _ ? Jesus, Dad! What were you thinking!?"

Scott steps in, voice pitched to  _ Field Commander _ . "It's just a misunderstanding, that's all. Penelope had some intel --"

"Misunderstanding," Jeff scoffs. "Son, she's using you. She just wants access or, or I don't  _ know _ , but I've spoken to the board and she's been poking --"

"I don't believe you." No one's as shocked to hear John's voice as John is, but the words come out regardless, dropping into the room like spent bullets. "Penelope would  _ never _ . You're just afraid, that's all. Afraid of not being able to control  _ everything _ anymore."

"Now, John, that's not fair --"

"Isn't it?" Gordon interrupts Virgil. "Cause it kinda seems like that to me. IR, the business, Penny and me… you just don't like that you haven't had your say, do you?"

"Gordon!"

But Field Commander has never held as much sway with Thunderbird Four as it ought to and it doesn't now, either. He tears himself free from Alan's grasp, and snatches blindly at one of the rucksacks they'd brought with them. His expression is like thunder, his ragged breaths in time with the race of John's own heartbeat.

"Forget it," he snaps. "Forget all of it. I'm  _ out. _ "

"Gordon, don't --"

But it's too late. He's gone.

\---

It had been almost stupidly easy.

The Creighton-Ward girl had prevented the first deal, but that had only set Tracy further against her, and without her -- the face on the other end of the comm line grins, reptilian teeth bright against the shadows.

“Good old Jeff,” the boss drawls, “ever so predictable. I wonder if that aquatic idiot will take off after his lady love or stay to suffer with  _ dear old Dad. _ ”

“Does it matter?” he says, “They’re done for. My contacts --”

“Ah yes, and how are the  _ finest _ branch of law enforcement doing. Have they noticed there’s a rat in their nest yet?”

“Hey, less of the rat!”

“Oh, my apologies,  _ agent _ . Or is it Captain, now? I do get so confused with all these false little acts of power you know.”

“They’re not willing to cut a deal,” he admits, “not yet. They want hard evidence.”

“Which I, of course, am more than willing to provide.” There’s a clang in the background of the call, and the boss’s yellow eyes twitch and narrow. 

“Yeah? What’s that?”

He smiles again. It makes his skin crawl, honestly, but credits are credits and promises are promises. Even if they were made to the worst man he’s ever met.

“Let them know, for the tiny one time price of my freedom, I can bring down Thunderbird Five.”


	6. Interregnum [5.5]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A 'missing scene' between chapters five and six

The thing about is knowing, is that it’s an art.

Not like music or painting, not a portrait of a lady or a soft serenade, no, nothing so simple nor so easy as that. 

A man can be taught to draw, a child trained to sing, a woman can write ream after ream of nonsense, fill pages with dreams and desires until her fingers bleed and her heart falls into the page an empty husk, her life's work a thing to cast out on the wind. 

Knowing is different. 

Knowing is being four years old, and a man coming to your door in the dead of night.

It had been the door of the manor, not the door to her room, but it was her door even then. Her mother had been long gone, her father already hardly more than a ghost, and she, the Lady of the house, had tucked herself away on the grand staircase, watching as the dirty faced man in the torn jacket had spluttered in a language she didn't understand, a sack of tools at his feet, a crowbar held tight in his grubby fists. The stranger hadn't seen the narrowing of round blue eyes as he'd concentrated on the lock to her father's study. 

He hadn't known, but she had.

She'd known her father would come, known the butler would drag the stranger from her sight, and Nanny would carry her away. 

She'd already known what would happen when her father called her down that morning, that he’d tell her, "This is Parker, he's a friend."

The man had smiled at her then through newly broken teeth, and Penelope had nodded, sure and certain, because she is, was, will always be, because _knowing_ is something you're born with. It's a prickle up your spine. The skipped beat. A hum that no one else hears, and Penelope has always known. Good or evil, friend or foe, love or hate. Always. It’s what makes her so very good at her job, so perfect a hostess, so subtle an interrogator. That well honed ability to look a man in the eye, just once, and be utterly and entirely certain of the content of his soul, and it has never failed her, not once.

Until now.

Now the only thing she knows is that she absolutely cannot be seen to cry. Far too unseemly. Weak. _Pathetic._ The paparazzi smother her as she leaves the hotel, buzzing like mosquitoes as Parker opens the door and she offers them a media smile -- sweet, coquettish, slight -- that she has no idea if she actually achieves.

"Lady Penelope! Lady Penelope do you have any comment on Jeff Tracy's return? Do you --"

The door slams closed, a sign of Parker's wavering restraint, and cuts the reporter off.

Does she have any comment? Not one fit for publication in a _family_ paper that's for sure.

 _Family_ , and just the thought sticks in her throat, makes her chest ache and her eyes burn, because God, but she’d thought she’d known _that_ at least. Pitiful, silly girl. 

"Milady?" Parker's gentle, because _he_ knows _her_ , and she must look frightful all flustered and wet eyed because when he looks in the mirror she sees the way his brows draw low in concern. "Where to?"

And she doesn't know that, either. Doesn't have a clue, only, "Anywhere, Parker. Anywhere but here."

\---

Gordon loves his father.

Loves him with a fierceness that pounds through his veins, that thunders his name in time with the rhythmic smack of the duffle against his spine, the thud of feet against asphalt.

 _Dad, Dad, Dad_ , Dad.

He loves him so much that he _hates_ him.

He hates the way he's so sure, so certain of every damn thing all the goddamn time, and hadn't Gordon been sure? Hadn't Gordon been certain? And then he'd died and then he _hadn't_ \--

Two hundred yards ahead of him FAB One merges into New York City traffic, just a pink blur lit by camera flashes with a pull on his heart so hard he feels like it might be torn in two.

Might.

Two just seems kinda restrained, kinda delicate, compared to the crushing, sickening feeling behind his breastbone. Seems like something that might be fixed, somehow, stitched back together when all Gordon's doing is falling apart.

Falling apart and _catching the damn car._

Scott's the runner in the family, old skinny legs can eat up the miles like Alan gobbles brownies, but Gordon's no slowcoach. The traffic's on his side, keeping Parker at a crawl, but the pack of salivating paparazzi _aren't_. They crowd between him and his goal, dark shades and darker grins sharp as shark teeth as he struggles his way through.

" _Is that --?"_

_"Yeah! The one with the rocket?"_

_"Nah man, the other one, the swimmer."_

_"What the hell is he --"_

He doesn't hang about for the end of that one -- wouldn't know the answer if he did -- instead he barrels through the chattering crowd and launches himself at the back of the car.

He realises, half a second too late, that Parker has ways of dealing with people who are stupid enough to stay on FAB One's tail.

"Aw _shit_."

\---

“What in the _blazes_?”

She has her compact open, drafting the letter that she absolutely must send to Colonel Casey but has no idea how to write, and the jolt as something slams into the rear of the car sends it skittering to the ground at her feet, the screen cracking as it bounces off the console.

“Parker?”

“Already on it, Milady,” her erstwhile Chauffeur states grimly, his hand moving toward FAB One’s defences as she twists her body round to try and get a better look at whoever has been foolish enough to ram them.

“Oh my -- Parker don’t!”

But it’s too late. She catches a last glimpse of tow-headed blond as thick, dark oil arcs out, and then she’s launching herself at the door of the still-moving car, Parker’s squarks of displeasure blending into the furious clattering of two dozen paparazzos all throwing their cameras up at once.

Gordon lies amongst them, just two huge brown eyes in the pool of filth she’s left in her wake, and, lord above, if _that_ isn’t a thought she doesn’t want to examine too closely.

“Gentlemen,” she says it like she was taught to, like she means it, like she wants all those cameras to turn on her and this time, only this time, she actually does. “Please, do excuse us. Darling?”

It’s a considered choice, the pet name. Chosen because she _knows_ the ways their minds work, can already see the cogs turn into credits in their eyes, already read _her_ name in the headlines, not his. Gordon blinks up at her, perfectly forgotten, and she lets her next smile reach her eyes. 

“Get in.”

\---

She feels Parker’s shudder, FAB One shaking under the force of it as Gordon slips and squelches his way into the backseat. He leaves perfect dark hand prints on the cream leatherwork and drips, morosely, onto the merino wool carpets.

“Milady --” 

She cuts him off with a sharp _tsk_ , her own hands coming away hopelessly filthy as she wipes her thumbs across too-damp cheeks where oil and something else have mixed into a horrid black paste. Gordon says nothing, only leans into her touch before backing away, skittish, at Parker’s groan.

“Ignore him,” she assures him, “It’s entirely his own fault.”

Parker makes another, ruder, sound, but neither of them pay much mind. Gordon’s breathing heavily, heavier than he ought to be after such a short sprint, and she finds herself patting at his shoulders, his sides, worried eyes scanning for whatever injury must have spurred him after her.

“Penny?” He’s holding his own hands up, surrender style. “Pen -- you’re getting -- Penelope, stop it!”

“You’re hurt?” It’s a question that isn’t, not really, because Penelope is good at knowing, and she knows that twist to those lips, the shadow in those eyes, knows them as well as she knows her own name. “Let me see.”

Gordon huffs, something that might have been a laugh, once, but now sounds half a beat from a sob. “Nah.”

She rolls her eyes, and makes nimble work of his shirt buttons. He snatches at the edges, head swivelling toward the windows, and hisses a scandalised, _“Hey_!”

“Oh do relax,” she mutters, slapping at his wrists until he lets her pull the sodden material away from his shoulders. “This is New York, sweetheart. This is _nothing_.”

“So _you_ say!” But he lets her continue, shifting his weight and kicking his own jeans off, until he’s sat in nothing but his boxers, body streaked with sweat, hair black, surrounded by discarded rags and wearing a smile that makes her heart seize.

“See?” he flings his arms out as far as he can in the confined space. “I'm _fine_.”

It's an invitation, an opening she doesn't take, and the silence lingers a moment too long -- long enough for him to shiver, to reach for the duffle he'd dragged in after him and pluck something soft from its depths. Long enough to wonder.

"What 'appened?"

They both move to answer, both their jaws snapping shut as they realise, and Gordon pulls a marl hoody over his head, taking his time to work his arms into the sleeves as Parker's eyes narrow in the rear view mirror.

"A misunderstanding," Penelope says breezily, far too breezily. "That's all."

One bushy eyebrow rises out of his reflection.

"Is that so, Master Gordon?"

The hoody is too long, too tight in the shoulders. The sleeves hang over his hands and the hem sits around his mid thigh. He’d clearly left in a hurry, although she should have guessed that by how quickly he caught up to them, and he refuses to meet either of their eyes as he rummages deeper into the bag muttering invectives about _stupid lanky brothers_.

“Gordon?”

He pauses, his hand leaving marks on the waistband of a pair of NASA sweats. "Yeah -- no. I don't know."

"You didn't 'arf run." Parker says it conversationally, an observation. Penelope only hears the pauses in Gordon’s answer.

"Yeah. Well."

"In fact seems as if we're all running, Milady."

She balks at that, offence at the very notion ingrained into her bones. "Nonsense. I don't _run_."

Her broken compact has come to rest beneath the duffle, and as he tosses he bag to one side to work the too-long sweats up over his knees Gordon spots it, leaning down to pick it up as he wriggles his backside into them. “Oh Lady _Penelope_ ,” he says with something of his usual humour. “Brains is gonna be _cross_!” 

She snatches it, or tries to, but her hand slips and the cracked screen lights up, reveals immediately what she’d been doing -- what she’d been _trying_ to do -- in the moments before Gordon had thrown himself bodily into her vehicle. 

_Colonel Casey,_

_Despite all my efforts it would appear Mr Tracy has taken against my advice and plans to move TI further in the direction we have previously discussed. I am sorry that I have been unable to convince him of the folly of such choices, and as such I am forced to resign as --_

"So this isn't running?" He runs a hand across his face and lets it lie there, covering his eyes. "Jesus, Pen. What's happening to us?"

Carefully, terribly carefully, she peels his fingers away until she can twist her own between them and bring their joined hands to rest in her lap. Her business suit is ruined, but it isn’t as though she hasn’t half a dozen others. There’s only one boy -- one boy with callouses on his palms and oil under his fingernails. One boy that she absolutely cannot keep but oh -- _oh_ \--

She doesn’t look at him. Can’t. Because she knows herself, knows the streak of absolute selfish want that runs right through the very core of her, and it’s all she can do to keep her voice steady. 

"Your father will no doubt be arranging further investor meetings, we can drop you at Heathrow. By the time they get back you'll --"

"Whoa, hang on -- I'm not going back!"

"Don't be ridiculous! What are you going to do instead?"

He stares at her.

"I thought -- you and me --"

He thought, but god, she _wants_.

And wanting makes her mean. Makes her scoff when all she really wants to do is say _yes, yes of course_.

“You’re going to sit in my house and watch your family save the world? Don’t be obtuse. You’ll go mad.” Then, quieter. Truer. “You’ll hate me.”

“Never.” The vehemence surprises her, though it shouldn’t, not really. She’s never seen Gordon do anything that wasn’t with his whole heart, has she? “I will never regret choosing you.”

“Over everything?”

“Anything.”

At that moment, and only for a moment, she lets herself imagine it. The two of them, and nothing, no-one else. The two of them and their own choices, their own dreams, and she knows -- she knows it will never happen. Can never happen. Gordon covers the hand holding the compact with his other, lifts it and drops a kiss to her knuckles that cracks her heart right down the centre.

"No. No, Gordon. Don't let him be _right_." Her voice cracks right along with it. “If he thinks I’m trying to steal you away --”

"What, like some kind of pedigree puppy? Forget it, what am I gonna do, let him get away with speaking to you like that? No chance. Never. Not happening okay, so don’t even bother."

"Your brothers --"

There's hesitation there, just as she knew there would be, but it doesn't last, doesn't work the way she'd thought it would.

"Are big enough and ugly enough to cope without me. I'm just the pool boy nowadays anyway it's not like I can do anything _useful._ "

"That's not true."

"It's completely true, and you know it. He wants me to, what? Choose between you and brunch meetings in a penguin suit?" He grimaces. “It’s not you or the job, Penelope. It’s you _and_ the job, or it’s _him_.”

“We’re on the same side, Gordon,” she says quietly. “We all only want what’s best.”

“Do we?” He shakes his head. “I dunno, Pen. I don’t know anything anymore. Dad’s --” he takes a deep breath. “He’s not the same.”

Parker scoffs at that, breaking the spell that seems to have befallen the two of them before gesturing rudely to a fellow motorist with poor lane discipline. “I’ll say. He’s spent eight years alone in outer space, young Master Gordon. If he was the same man, he’d be a blummin’ mirage.”

“I know _that_ ,” Gordon insists. “I do, I _get_ it. But -- people will die? People are dying and we -- my dad, he’d have helped them. He’d have let us help them. I just -- I don’t even know him anymore. I don’t even know if I ever _did_.”

And Penelope may have lost a little faith, somewhere between Tracy Industries and the oil-slicked backseat of her car, but she hasn’t yet lost her tact.

She knows, still, just enough. Enough to recognise fear in a man’s eyes. Ambition. Dread. Lust. Courage. So she doesn’t tell him, doesn’t dare, that when she looks into his father’s eyes she sees nothing. Nothing at all. Instead she tightens her grip on his hand, on the broken compact, and says;

“Take us home, Parker.”

\---

(Gordon loves his father.

He does.

His father is a dead man.)


	7. To the Slaughter

SPECTRUM's Cloudbase hums with energy, with people, heady with a sense of power and control and it runs up his spine, makes him stand to attention, his eyes fixed on the wall of monitors above the Commander’s head. They’re all blank, of course. They’re always blank when  _ he _ reports. 

They’ve never trusted him. They know better.

“And Tracy was definitely involved?”

“Certainly, Sir. I saw him make the agreement myself.”

Colonel White groans, sitting back in his seat and scrubbing his hand over his face. “Damn. I had hoped -- but never mind. Green?”

Green, who has been hovering as ever at his Lord and master’s elbow, snaps to attention. “Sir?”

“Contact the GDF, but don’t --” he takes another deep breath, too deep, maybe. “Don’t let them know too much yet, only that we have reasons to be concerned.”

One of Green’s eyebrows quirks, only slightly. “About Tracy Industries, or about Jeff Tracy himself, Sir?”

White pulls up the files, each of them bright with reams of numbers, letters, codes that  _ he _ found, that  _ he  _ brought here. Above them float holograms of faces he’s only seen from a distance, and ships -- the  _ ships _ \--

“Magnolia?”

He jumps slightly, and Green’s lip curls. 

“Rough night, Captain?” he says. “The papers say it was quite the party.”

“I wouldn’t know, Lieutenant,” he replies. “I was rather busy.”

“Yes.” White’s scrolling through his latest report, brows furrowed. “So I see. The Creighton-Ward girl -- Tracy dismissed her?”

“Hotel staff say she left in a hurry.“

“Yes, so I see.”

“Apparently,” and he drawls this bit, leans forward ever so slightly, “she’s been _ fucking  _ a son.”

Green winces. “No need for that, Magnolia.”

“No?” he turns his attention back to White who has yet to look up. “Could be an in, Sir.”

“A Creighton-Ward?” White shakes his head sharply. “I worked with her father for years. They don’t turn easily.” Then, “Which boy?”

“The submariner, Sir. Four.”

White hums. “Make a note of it, Green.”

“Sir, I don’t think --”

It’s Magnolia’s turn to smirk then, as the Colonel waves off his subordinate’s hushed protest.

“Thank you, Captain,” he says finally, the reports dismissed. “Your information has been -- well. I’d rather have had better news. I’ve known Jeff Tracy for many years, the man’s done a lot of good -- but this.” He sighs. “You’ve done good work, Captain Magnolia.”

“Thank you, sir.” A deep breath, because this -- this is the moment of no return. “There’s something -- there’s something else you should know.”

White looks up. “Oh? Not in the report?”

“No, Sir.” And even Green’s eyes widen in interest. “But this -- this is going to come with a price.” 

\---

**Colorado. Three weeks later.**

“I don’t even know what I’m  _ doing  _ here!”

Alan flops down onto the nearest bench with the sort of world weary groan suited to a man at least three times his age. Gordon grins up at him from his comm.

“I could probably come up with a few ideas?”

Alan just huffs at him. “S’alright for  _ you _ . Dad never made  _ you _ do any of this.”

Gordon’s expression doesn’t change. “Well, far be it from me to defend Dad’s control freakery, but he was kinda at the other end of the solar system at the time, champ.”

Alan wrinkles his nose up. “Maybe I could just -- go sit in the sea instead. Until he gets bored.”

Gordon actually laughs at that, and it sounds  _ right _ , even through the shitty commercial holocomm he’s using. Alan misses it. “I don’t think you’d get away with that. Scott only left me down there because he thought he could save himself a few grey hairs.”

Alan snorts. “Didn’t work.”

“Alan!” He bolts upright like a puppet on a string to see his father making his way across the quad towards him, what look like several Very Important People in tow.

“Shit,” he mutters, “shit, here he comes.”

“Language,” Gordon says mildly, then, with a suddenly furtive look, “will you call me again? After?”

“Yeah,” Alan says, but he’s already trying to stuff the comm away in the pocket of his backpack. “Yeah of course I --”

He closes the zip over Gordon just as his father starts gesturing to him. The Very Important People all peer down at him as though he’s a very  _ unimportant _ mollusc. It’s kinda becoming a  _ theme _ .

“Gentlemen,” his dad booms, “this is my son, Alan. He’s planning on taking astrophysics here in the fall.”

Alan, who doesn’t particularly feel like  _ any  _ of this is his plan even a little bit, waves weakly and offers his best, “Hey, pleased to meet you.”

It’s -- a strong word, for how he really feels. Miserable would be closer, but probably less polite. Less acceptable to his dad, who’s looking between Alan’s strained smile and the shark-like grimaces of the VIP’s with an expression closer to happiness than anything Alan’s seen from him in weeks. Since New York. Since  _ Gordon. _

Alan hasn’t actually dared to speak his brother's name since he’d let the door to the hotel suite slam shut behind him -- not in company anyway. John had tried, once, the day that Dad had told them they were to resume rescues, only to be cut off with a sharp, “ _ Not now, John _ .” and then Dad had turned to him -- turned  _ on  _ him. “ _ Alan, you’re off the roster. _ ”

Alan has spent enough time in zero G that the feeling of the world falling away from under him really shouldn’t have come as a shock as his universe had shrunk right down to the twitch in Scott’s jaw, to the silence from Virgil, the bright spots in John’s cheeks, the sound of his father’s voice and  _ College, son, it’s such an opportunity -- _

“--okay, Alan?”

Alan blinks. One of his father’s companions, an older man with a large and excessively wobbly moustache, is looking down at him, hand outstretched, fluffy eyebrows raised in question.

“Uh --” he says, eyes flicking to his dad who nods almost imperceptibly. “Yes? I mean yes, yes. Of course. Sure.”

“Excellent!” Hairy face guy rubs his hands together gleefully, then turns to Jeff. “We will catch up later, Mr Tracy. I can’t wait to hear your opinion on our advances in your absence!”

Jeff waves his agreement, but it’s distracted, absent, his attention already drawn down to his tab and Alan can see from here the long, long list of missed calls waiting for him.

“Come along then,” chirrups Hairy Guy, his hand still outstretched. Alan, for lack of any idea what else to do, grabs hold of it to pull himself up. Hairy Guy drops it like it burns. He laughs, high pitched and not entirely convincingly, and not-so-surreptitiously wipes his hand on his tweed blazer. “Astrophysics or aerospace engineering?” he asks. Alan blinks again. 

“Uh --”

“Of course, of course, it’s a difficult choice to make I understand that, and that’s why here at Colorado U we encourage all our students to --”

He keeps talking, keeps walking, and Alan follows after him because, he supposes, that’s pretty much what he  _ does _ now. Colorado, like Virgil. Astrophysics, like John. Aerospace Engineering, like Dad. Once upon a time those comparisons might have thrilled him, might have  _ meant _ something to a kid who still had no idea where he fit in the world.

Only he’d found it, hadn’t he? His place. His role. His future.

The cool sunlit corridors echo with the squeak of his sneakers, smelling heavily of pine and body spray and lingering smoke, and he thinks --

_ Shit _ .

_ College. _

It isn’t that he’d never considered it -- he’s had to, there’ve been plenty of well meaning career advisers over the years who hadn’t quite connected the Tracy name to International Rescue -- but he’s never  _ craved _ it. Not in the way he remembers some of his online classmates craving it. The freedom, the space, the escape if not the education, but Alan -- Alan had all of those things, all tied up in a pretty red bow and topped with ion engines. This is --

“Aerospace Engineering!” booms his guide, throwing open the door to a room lined with teak tables, every one of which is covered in an array of bleeping, flashing  _ stuff _ . Hairy Guy beams around the room, then turns his delighted expression on Alan, who manages a fairly convincing smile of his own. 

It’s rocket  _ science _ , after all. Close  _ enough _ . Hopefully.

And that takeoff payload graph is  _ way  _ off.

He risks a step toward it, the holographic image rotating slightly as the variables shift, and tilts his head to one side. Axis error, maybe? Or the thrust conversation is --

"Oh my god, it is you! Dude, I can’t believe it!"

Alan finds himself being spun on the spot, his hand grabbed and vigorously pumped up and down by someone it takes him a couple of seconds to place without the hat or the camera or the inevitable ongoing disaster.

“Brandon?”

“Yeah! Yeah it’s me! Oh man, let me tell you, when I heard you were coming I was so psyched I --” 

Alan shakes his head, “You heard I was coming? How --  _ I  _ didn’t know I was coming.”

“Duh!” Brandon’s grinning at him, still. “You’re like  _ you _ . Word gets out!”

“It’s like --  _ really  _ not meant to. You know that, right?”

Brandon drops his hand and waves dismissively, “It’s all good, nothing ever happens here anyway. I thought you’d be like, off to  _ Yale _ or something anyway this is just so --” 

Hairy guy, who has been looking between the two of them with an expression of faint bemusement, clears his throat. "You know each other?"

Brandon gapes at him. "Know -- don't you know who this is?!"

"Mr Tracy --" He begins, but Brandon’s off on a roll already and Alan -- Alan’s head’s spinning quicker than any of the atomic structures around the edge of the room.

" _ Alan  _ Tracy! This guy’s a  _ hero _ ! He saved my  _ life _ ! Man, how've you been!?"

Fucking awful sounds impolite, but Alan’s not much of a liar. He shrugs. Tries to look casual about it. "Uh, y'know. Good?"

"Hey, I heard your Dad came back from the dead." Brandon’s expression drops, his voice turning solemn. "That’s heavy, dude."

That’s -- probably the greatest understatement of all time, truth be told, and honestly, he doesn’t really want to talk about it. Not when he can see the way his tour guide’s ears have pricked up at the prospect of  _ details _ . "Kinda --" He looks about for a distraction and focuses on the incorrect graph again. "This yours?"

"Aw hell no, I take Media Studies, these science guys are total  _ nerds _ .” He stops, considering. “No offense, bro."

Alan manages a smile. It feels like months since he’s had a conversation with  _ anyone  _ that hasn’t held an undercurrent of secretive strained civility. "None taken, I think. How'd you end up in here anyway?" He leans back on his heels slightly, puts his hands on his hips. “If it’s for  _ nerds _ ?”

This is clearly some sort of sore point, and two high points of colour appear in Brandon’s cheeks. "Oh you know. Fancied a change of scene I guess."

"Shall I leave you two gentlemen to it?" Hairy guy doesn’t sound like he means it, in fact he sounds like it might be the worst idea he’s ever had. “Or will you be joining the faculty and your father over in Astrophysics?” 

"Astrophysics?” Brandon scoffs. “This kid’s got his own  _ rocket ship _ , what are those dweebs ever gonna be able to teach him? Nah, c’mon Tracy, stick with me -- say, you seen the canteen yet?"

"No?" Alan isn’t entirely sure which of them he’s answering, but Brandon’s already made the choice for him, grabbing him by the elbow and practically dragging him from the lab and back out into the echoing corridors.

"C’mon c’mon, lemme give you the tour." He grins back at him over his shoulder. “The  _ real  _ tour.”

And his Dad’s gonna be furious and he really  _ ought _ to have gone to Astrophysics, but -- 

But Brandon takes a sharp right, a left, and then they’re in the midst of a crowd of young people, shouting and hollering and laughing as they move between buildings, Brandon’s grip on his arm tightening as they’re jostled by the flow and Alan -- Alan thinks maybe college might not be that bad after all.

  
  


\----

Scott paces from one side of the living room to the other, wearing a stripe into the floor as he passes the empty desk. He’d tried distracting himself by swiping irritably at the keys of the baby grand, but Virgil’s displeasure had soon put paid to that, and the location map of the newly restarted ongoing rescues hasn’t changed in hours. Three glows, red and steady, where John is offloading a broken down sightseeing ship somewhere over the Sea of Tranquility. One and Two’s symbols sit, ready and waiting, in the hanger below. Tracy One is marked safe at the private airfield in Colorado that Virgil had once used, and he should be happy with that, shouldn’t he?

But Yellow is greyed out. Offline. And Scott finds he can’t quite look at the wall of portraits, at the cold, emotionless eyes, without feeling faintly ill. Off kilter.  _ Wrong. _

It’s too damn quiet by far.

“Eos?” He drags the chair out from under the desk and readjusts the height. “Any updates?”

“Oh,” she says, and he knows immediately he’s chosen a bad moment -- though with the AI being as petulant as she’s been lately he’s not sure there’s really such a thing as a  _ good  _ one anymore. “It’s  _ you _ .”

“Yes Eos,” he sighs, already regretting the call. “It’s me. Update on Thunderbird 3’s progress?”

If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she  _ sniffs _ . “ _ My _ pilot has done an excellent job. The passengers are secure, and he is returning to Earth to rendezvous with the travel company’s transfer vessel.”

“FAB,” Scott says. “Control ou --”

“Scott?”

“Yes?”

“When is he coming back?”

Scott has never entirely grasped the intricacies of his brother’s relationship with the AI. He loves his ship, of course he does, he’s a pilot and she’s -- she’s the best there is, of that he’s damn sure. But Eos and Five are something else, their relationship with John something more symbiotic, more personal, than anything Scott’s ever really experienced and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t freak him out. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t understand the misery in her voice and he’d be lying if he pretended he knew what to do about it, so he falls back on the old favourite, the bland, gentle reassurance of a thousand rescues where nothing has ever, ever been guaranteed.

“Soon,” he tells her. “He’ll be back soon.”

He forgets that Eos listens, and Eos knows.

“You should tell John that,” she says, bitter, and Scott wonders what sort of conversations the two of them have been having over closed comms. “Thunderbird Five, out.”

The commline drops dead, the AI equivalent of leaving the phone off the hook, and Scott scrubs a hand over his tired eyes. Nothing more to be gained by the roundabout route, he tries going direct.

“Control to Thunderbird Three, John come in.”

John’s hologram bursts into existence in the centre of the room, and he looks -- honestly, he looks  _ awful _ . His usually perfectly coiffed hair is practically on end, the collar of his uniform is askew as though someone’s been hanging from it and there’s a smear of something that actually looks like  _ lipstick _ down the left side of his visor. Scott raises his eyebrows.

"Everything all right?"

" _ Peachy _ ," John half sneers, jolting Three to starboard with a touch more force than strictly necessary. Scott smirks.

"Cargo causing issues?"

"How does Alan  _ do  _ it?"

"Do what?"

"Cope! With --" he throws his hands up in the air. Three rolls hard to port. The sound of distant wailing is grimly satisfying.

"Maybe it's something to do with his cheerful and positive outlook on life?" Backlit by the red of the fuel gauges Scott's grin turns evil. "I could call him if you like? Get him to talk you through it."

John grimaces.

"Didn't think so."

There's a pause broken only by muttered swearing as John finally sets Three on a steady course for home, and this is the point at which Scott ought to hang up, but he doesn't.

Instead he finds himself dithering which is achingly unlike him, so unlike him in fact that it has him running nervous hands through carefully coiffed hair. Sweat beads on his upper lip and he's sure John's eyes narrow in on it, laser sharp and all knowing and  _ fuck  _ but he's just about had enough of this new normal already and it's only  _ Tuesday _ .

"Am  _ I _ this annoying?"

"Do you honestly want me to answer that?"

John huffs, then, with a rather overblown slap of the autopilot, sits back with his arms folded.

"Spit it out then."

"What?"

John lowers his voice as though he's speaking to a very nervous, very dim, puppy. "If I knew what you wanted, Scott,I wouldn't have to ask, would I?"

“Have you spoken to him?”

Dad’s off in Colorado lugging Alan around the physics department of a college he has absolutely no interest in attending, but Scott still lowers his voice. Still drops the emphasis on the last word to avoid saying -- to avoid saying the name that’s been ringing around and around his head for weeks now. Years, probably. John stares at him.

“ _ Him _ ?” he says. Sneers. “I presume you mean  _ Gordon _ ?” 

Scott manages not to cringe, but it’s a close run thing.

“You know I do.”

“No,” John snaps. “No I haven’t.” Then, softer, blue-green eyes flicking away from the comm. “He’s not wearing his watch.”

“I know.” It’s an admittance, and John knows it, his whole body language changing as he rounds his shoulders, leans in. Conspiratorial, almost, and sometimes -- sometimes Scott forgets that where Gordon is Chaotic Good, John’s always bordered on Lawful Evil.

“Eos has tracked him to England, at least. They’re together.”

Scott lets out a breath he’s hardly realised he’s been holding. “That’s something.”

“Is it?” John shakes his head. “You know what he’s like, Scott. He won’t forgive him, not easily.”

It’s not immediately clear who John’s talking about, the similarities between Gordon and his father too close, too  _ horribly _ alike, to differentiate between grudge holder and unforgiven, but then he adds, “Dad cannot  _ stand  _ to be wrong. About anything.” A pause. “Ever.”

In the years since his father disappeared in a cloud of smoke Scott has carefully curated the pedestal Jeff Tracy stands aloft, steadying it with memories of bedtime stories read from the moon and filling in the gaps in the brickwork with childhood laughter and the feel of a strong hand at a bony shoulder. Anything that might undermine the foundations of the father he chose to remember had been cast aside. Ignored. Avoided. Memories too cracked, too ugly to spoil the perfect, opaline light of memory.

When Penelope had turned to him in that boardroom, betrayal bright in those big blue eyes, he’d felt the earth shudder. As the door had slammed behind Gordon, it had begun to quake.

“He’s stubborn,” he says, “he’ll come around.”

“He better,” says John with the sort of leaden certainty that makes Scott’s heart sink a little further. Then, “Alan speaks to him.”

“What?”

“Gordon,” John says again, and it’s strange, so, so strange how a word he’s heard so many times in his life can suddenly change all meaning. “Alan speaks to him. Perhaps you could pass a message along.” A pause. The lifting of one ginger brow. “Or speak to him yourself.”

“I can't talk to him.” He says with a certainty he hadn’t realised he’d held, his heart thumping uncomfortably at even the thought --

“Why?” And John isn’t really asking. He isn’t. Scott’s known John for John’s whole life, and Scott knows when John’s got the answer already. When he’s just waiting for the rest of them to catch up. Grade Six Math quizzes. Francois Lemaire’s idiotic plan of the day. Scott’s greatest fear. John always just  _ knows _ , but he’s gonna make him say it. Careering toward Earth with a cargo hold full of unhappy space tourists and  _ still  _ smug as anything. Asshole. 

“Because if I talk to him he'll be right, and I can't afford for him to be right."

“Maybe,” John says. “Or maybe none of us can afford for Dad to be wrong.”

The distant wailing starts up again as Three prepares for reentry, this time accompanied by a faint but insistent cry for sickbags.

Scott smiles weakly as John sits back with a scowl. “See you at home?”

“Don’t  _ count  _ on it,” John spits out, and signs off with an uncharacteristically vicious slap of the comm.

“He’s not exactly living his best life right now, is he?”

Scott doesn’t turn to greet Virgil, only sinks into the closest chair, a forearm thrown over tired eyes.

“He can join the damn club,” he grumbles into his sleeve. “Did you know? About Alan?”

“Talking to Gordon?” The other end of the couch sinks under Virgil’s weight. “Which answer do you want to hear?”

“Don’t start,” Scott groans. “The truth, of course.”

“The truth is I plead the fifth.”

Scott drops his arm and squints up at his brother through narrowed eyes. “You would.”

“And I do.”

“I’d have thought it would be you. Calling.”

Virgil says nothing, only picks at a dot of paint that’s dried onto the knee of his jeans, so Scott tries again.

“You’re normally the first one to tell us when we’re being idiots.”

Virgil shrugs one shoulder. "Maybe that's why I haven't called him."

"Because you don't want to call him an idiot?"

"Because I don't think he  _ is. _ " He groans. "I don't like choosing sides, Scott."

Scott scoffs. "Never a problem in volleyball though."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah I -- of course I do. I feel the same way, Virgil. You know that."

"Do I?" Virgil shakes his head. "You've been pretty quiet on the subject."

"And what am I supposed to say? 'Hey Dad, welcome home. Here's what we've done with your life's work. Could you just maybe leave us to it?' you know  _ exactly  _ how well that would go down."

"Of course I do." Virgil stands. Stretches. Moves toward the fish tank and hovers there, far too big for the space. Far too small for it. It's with a sense of dawning horror that Scott realises his eyes are damp. "But it isn't only his life's work, is it?"

Scott doesn't answer. 

He doesn't need to.

\--

It's dark before Alan comes home, full of talk of college and Colorado and Brandon goddamn Berringer of all things, but Scott sits up and listens regardless, Alan tucked into his side out on the moonlit deck just the way he used to, back when Dad first disappeared and Alan was still a kid. Listens, and watches as their father fades back into the house. A ghost, present but not, even now. Listens, but doesn't speak. Doesn’t call him back.

He doesn't know it then, but it's the last chance he gets.


	8. Heavenly Bodies

**One Million Years or Maybe a Week Later.**

Hampshire is a long way from the ocean.

It's beautiful, so beautiful, the late summer sun makes the grounds glow green-gold, burnishes the long drive, the gates just a faint metallic gleam through the trees that line the estate and god he's lucky, isn't he?

So lucky.

It's a long way from the ocean, though. And lucky doesn't quite make up for the ache behind his breastbone, the constant, irritating twitch of muscles waiting, _waiting_. 

He does a lot of waiting.

Penelope is -- well, busy doesn't seem like a big enough word for what Penelope is. Frantic, maybe, but that suggests a panic, an unease, that just doesn't apply. She segues seamlessly from Lady of the Manor to hostess to campaigner to politico to lover and he's constantly impressed -- impressed and _jealous_ . Because Gordon is _stuck_.

There are things Gordon should have been. Would have been, had the world worked out that way. Olympian. WASP officer. Dreams that had been shattered in a cloud of smoke and flame, the Zero X whipping them just as far out of reach as they had his Dad. But he's adapted. Had adapted. He’d become Thunderbird Four. It's more than a callsign, far more, it’s a constant steady reminder of his place in the world, in his family. Fourth of five. 

Because no matter what he's become, what he hasn't, that's one absolute he's never had to doubt.

Four is a Thunderbird. But Gordon is a brother. He doesn't know how to be anything else.

 _But_.

He looks down at the silent comm. It's the one Parker had handed him his first night at the manor. No words and no platitudes, only a knowing sort of grimace at the too pale skin on Gordon's suddenly bare wrist.

"Thanks Parker," he'd said, and he'd meant it. "But I don't think I'll be needing it."

He'd thought he'd meant that, too. Still hot with fury, John's stolen clothes sticking to his back, the thought of contacting _any_ of them had been anathema to him. Impossible. But the night and Penny had soothed his temper, turned the heat of anger into something softer, gentler, sadder.

Gordon has always been a brother, and now --

Now, he kinda feels like he isn't.

He definitely isn't _Thunderbird Four_ anymore, that's been made _more_ than clear. Virgil's _ridiculous_ drop from Two into the Hudson had been beamed across the world for all to see, his brother's face practically smashed against Four's windscreen as he'd manhandled her as though she was little more than an exosuit. Gordon had winced at Virgil's shabby turns, and the awkward way he'd shoved Four's nose under the bridge pylon like a _doorstop_ had stung but not anything like as much as the absolute silence from his comm.

He can't imagine Alan wouldn't have told Virgil about their commlink. Alan’s ability to keep secrets lies somewhere around absolute zero and Virgil is by far the best of them at guilt trips, so that means he's left to assume that either Virgil doesn't care enough to call him, or Virgil isn't _allowed_.

And that -- well, that’s sort of the icing on the cake isn’t it? Eight years -- his whole adult life -- spent wishing and regretting and _wanting_ all tossed away in weeks, the miracle of their father's return proving that Gordon, at least, really ought to be more careful what he wished for.

It hasn't escaped his notice that his father is the common denominator in the dreams that have him toss and turn at night, that it’s his dad’s face that leers out at him from the depths, turns his back, slams the door. But that just makes the ache worse, makes it spread from his chest to his belly to his throat, so he tries not to think about the dreams too much at all. 

It’s just -- he wishes Virgil would call.

He’s not sure he can bear to see Virgil there instead.

He shifts on the window seat, his legs tingling from the hours he must have been sitting here already, and watches the shadows lengthening along the drive.

The sun’s setting, but Penelope won’t be home for hours yet, and the silence is just -- it’s so much, the silence. This house is so huge, and so _full_ , of history and furniture and expectation, that it almost scares him how empty it, _he_ , feels the moment she leaves. How he sits at this window and stares and twitches and _waits_ , because he doesn’t know what else to do. Doesn’t have any idea how he can soothe that ache. Doesn’t actually remember calling Alan until his little brother’s face lights up the room and Gordon -- Gordon suddenly remembers how to breathe.

“Hey!” 

“Hey yourself, what’s up?”

Everything. Nothing. Gordon’s in the middle of an existential crisis fueled by copious cups of Oolang and too much daytime TV and Gordon doesn’t tell him this, of course. He doesn’t have the words for it. Can’t bear, even now, to place any more of a burden on his only baby brother than the world already has.

It’s always been Gordon’s job to lighten the mood, to put a smile on Alan’s face, so instead he tells him everything else. About Sherbet and Penny and how stupid Parker looks in his nightcap. About how they’ve been down to the pool at midnight, how the stars look different here. How he watches them all the same, because _keeping an eye out, baby bro_. He asks about Colorado, about choices. He says nothing of the terror that seizes him every time he turns on the news, of the numb, helpless misery of watching from afar.

He says a lot. He says nothing at all.

For his part Alan seems distracted, his eyes flicking about whenever Gordon pauses for breath, his shoulders hunched tightly, his face far too close to the comm.

“It’s not that I didn’t _like_ it,” he tells some spot over Gordon’s left shoulder. “It’s just -- I don’t even know _how_ to go to college.” He sighs, his shoulders dropping slightly, and Gordon’s heart clenches. “It doesn’t even matter, does it? If I don’t go I’ll disappoint dad, and if I do --” he huffs again, and Gordon can see the way he’s plucking at the loose threads at the cuffs of his sweater. “If I do I’m only gonna _embarrass_ him.”

Gordon can’t help it, he scoffs. “Because that’s _never_ happened to Dad before. _Ever_ . Listen, Alan, there’s something you ought to know about Dad, something Scott wouldn’t even _know_ to tell you and John’s too damn proud to. He was disappointed by us. A _lot_.”

Alan’s brows draw together and Gordon can see the denial in his eyes before he even gets as far as opening his mouth. 

“Trust me,” he insists. “John and I -- well, look. Hotshot Scotty and the Renaissance Lumberjack? Not an easy pair to follow. Dad knows better than to expect perfection, Allie.” 

“Easy for you to say,” Alan grumbles. “John’s an _astronaut_ and you’re --”

“The black sheep?” Gordon grins, even as the words stick in his throat. “If you don’t believe me, ask John.”

“Yeah,” Alan huffs. “Maybe when he’s actually _here_ long enough.” A pause. “Dad was really disappointed in him? In _John_?”

“Oh, but no tone of surprise when it comes to _me_?” 

Alan throws himself back, arms over his head, and Gordon finds himself talking to the underside of his chin. There’s a soft tuft of blond hair there that he’s missed when he’s shaved and it trembles as he exhales heavily.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I’m just complaining about -- you should be complaining. Not me.”

“Oh? Me?” Gordon stretches his grin wider, brighter, even though Alan can’t possibly see. “I’m hanging out with the aristocracy, what have I got to complain about?” He leans in, lowers his voice to a whisper. “Coffee’s crap though, Virgil would _hate_ it.”

Alan sits bolt upright as though he’s been electrocuted. “Virgil! He wanted -- that is -- do you, can he talk to you?”

Gordon’s breath escapes all in one great rush, relief sparking through his veins like electricity.

“Yeah! I mean -- shit, yeah, of course he can -- I --”

The unholy shriek of the alarm almost sends him flying backwards off his perch -- it’s been too long since he’s heard it and simultaneously nowhere _near_ long enough, because Gordon _knows_ that noise, knows it deep in his bones, just as well as he knows the sudden, pale terror that flashes over Alan’s face before he schools his expression into something tighter. 

_Intruder_.

“I gotta go,” Alan half garbles, already on his feet, “I gotta --”

“Al --”

The comm dies. Gordon curls his fingers around blue-grey static, heart thundering in his ears as though he's just swum for his life and -- 

Fuck. Jesus. _Fuck._

Wide awake and shaking and he’s right smack damn in the middle of his own worst nightmare because there’s nothing he can do, is there? Even if Penny were here, even if FAB One were parked out the front and he could knock Parker the _hell out_ and grab the keys -- he’s on the other side of the planet. Alone.

And his brothers need him.

Alan -- 

The comm slips between his fingers as it vibrates, skittering across the parquet flooring of Penelope’s hallway and Gordon goes scrambling after it, answering it with a panicked sort of yelp as his bare feet slip on the polished surface.

“Why are you on the fl --” Alan’s face is partially obscured by what Gordon recognises as the fronds of one of Grandma’s potted plants. The cheese plant, probably. The one at the top of the lounge stairs that’s been the go to hiding place for nosy younger brothers since day dot. “Nevermind. I don’t wanna know.”

“What’s going on?”

Alan’s nose wrinkles, whether with distaste or confusion Gordon can’t quite be sure. “GDF? Some guy in a suit? Dad’s doing the _desk thing_.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“I dunno.” Alan readjusts the comm and for the first time in a month Gordon sees the lounge, tiny and blue, and his father at the center behind his desk. Even from the other side of the planet Gordon can see the tilt of his chin, imagine the burn of those grey eyes. “Dad doesn’t look happy. Nor does Scott.”

Gordon’s not entirely prepared for the way his eyes burn as he lays them on Scott, or for the next words that spill, utterly unplanned, from his mouth. 

“Get Scott to call me.”

“What?”

“After --” he gestures vaguely to the image of the man in the dark suit. Scott’s hands are on his hips, his father’s flat on the table. “Whatever. Tell Scott I need to speak to him.”

The lounge blurs and then it’s Alan again, or his right eye at least, narrowed suspiciously as he peers at Gordon. “Not Virgil?”

“No.” He says, and that probably shocks Alan, it certainly shocks him. Gordon loves Scott and Scott loves him, he knows he does, but Gordon and Scott are not -- well. There are natural pairings and there are -- less so. It’s not a problem, it never has been. It’s just -- Gordon doesn’t usually go to Scott. Kinda the opposite of the norm.

But then this is getting to be a kinda opposite of the norm situation.

From downstairs he hears the chime of the alarm disarming followed by the creak and slam of the old oak doors. On the other side of the world the corner of Alan's mouth ticks up.

"Your girlfriend's home."

Gordon smiles, genuine and easy, because, "Yeah, she is."

"I'll call you later, okay? Scott too," Alan says. "I know he misses you."

"Sounds fake, but okay."

"Idiot." Alan rolls his eyes. "We _all_ miss you. Love you."

"Yeah yeah," Gordon scoffs, but he holds the comm a little tighter regardless. "You too, okay?"

"FAB," Alan says, his eyes bright, and snaps out of existence.

Gordon stares at the space where he was for a second longer until the afterimage has faded away to nothing, and swallows hard.

\--

**Tracy Island. GMT+11.**

Alan tucks the comm into his pocket as delicately as he can considering he’s pretty precariously balanced behind a houseplant, and peers between the leaves.

Down in the living room proper Scott has his arms folded across his chest, his face fixed in a scowl that would send anyone with any sense running for the hills.

Their visitor doesn’t appear to have an awful lot of sense.

“Colonel White.” His father’s voice is pleasant enough, but it carries like a warning. “I may have been gone for a while, but I believe it’s still considered polite to call in advance of dropping in.”

“And spoil the surprise?” Their visitor -- Colonel White, apparently -- is a gray haired man in a very fancy looking outfit who smiles with his mouth but keeps his eyes steely and fixed on Jeff. Alan’s reminded of one of those animal documentaries, the ones where the predators face off over a doomed gazelle. He’s not sure yet who’s the gazelle. “Besides, you’re a difficult chap to get a hold of.”

“On my private unmapped island?” Jeff drawls. “You don’t say.”

“You certainly have built quite the reputation, but then,” and White tips his head towards Scott. “You’ve had a little help.”

“More than a little.” 

“Dad? You ok?” It’s the cavalry, or Virgil anyway, marching in from the hanger with oil on his hands and a serious expression. 

“I’m fine, son.”

“Ah, Thunderbird Two is it?” White nods to Virgil. “I did wonder where you might have got to. Rumour is you’re a man down.”

“SPECTRUM doesn’t deal in rumours.” John now, making his way down from the gallery. “Why are you here, exactly?”

“And the mysterious Voice from Above! My my, the gang’s very nearly all here. You really do know how to keep a team under control, Tracy. I’m impressed. All these years and only one rebellion.”

Scott’s scowl only deepens. “My father has been through a lot, Sir. I’d thank you to treat him with some respect.”

“Oh of course, of course.” White shakes his head. “Though I’m afraid that the -- that the sorry business is part of why I’m here.”

Alan’s hand twitches above his pocket.

“Do you know something?”

He jumps, Kayo’s silent approach at odds with the harshness of her whisper.

“No, no I --”

“You ought to join us too, Miss Kyrano,” says White, beckoning toward what must now be the heavily swaying houseplant. “And Alan, isn’t it? A very impressive young man by all accounts.”

“Sorry,” Virgil again. He moves to stand between Alan and White as Alan makes his way down the stairs, head down, Kayo at his shoulder. “But whose accounts, exactly?”

“Ah. Well. There’s the rub of it you see. The problematic accounts here appear to be yours. Tell me, Jefferson, which is the shell organisation here? Tracy Industries? Or International Rescue?”

“Excuse me?”

White pulls a tablet from his pocket and drops it onto the desk. Immediately a dozen, two dozen, a _hundred_ transactions begin to scroll through the air. They mean nothing to Alan, less than nothing, but Scott and John both move in closer. John’s jaw drops.

“Impossible.”

“Really? Because what it appears to be, and what SPECTRUM has in fact proven to be the case, is a record of every transaction between Tracy Industries and, shall we say, some very, very unpleasant entities.”

John is gaping, his eyes flicking rapidly over the meaningless, damning figures. “These are -- weaponry -- zealots -- that’s a _cult_ , we’ve never, we wouldn’t --” 

“And yet, you have.” White tuts. “I suppose you expect me to believe that you had no idea? That not one of you remarkable young people ever thought to check on the accounts of the business that keeps you in your _heroic_ isolation?”

Scott and John exchange a look. White sighs.

“Of course, we all know such a denial would be pointless. After all, there’s one person who isn’t here today isn’t there, and where is he, exactly?”

“If you think Gordon has anything to do with the misuse of Tracy Industries funds,” Jeff says, “you have been very, very misinformed.”

“No, he’s not the most impressive of your sons is he? But he does seem to have at least one fan.”

Virgil goes a bit pale.

“Penelope. Penelope’s on the board.”

“The lovely Lady Penelope,” agrees White. “I believe she ought to be cooperating with my men as we speak, they _do_ have a warrant.”

“This is _ridiculous_ ,” Scott splutters. “Penelope would never betray us.”

Alan looks at his dad. His dad says nothing.

“Oh,” White says mildly. “I wasn’t suggesting that she would.”

Alan has never thought that a finger snap could be smug before, but White is apparently just chock full of surprises.

The hologram fizzes into life and Creighton-Ward Manor appears in the middle of the room. The sound of shouting echoes off the ancient walls swiftly followed by a furious muffled growl as a man lurches into view. He wears the uniform of a SPECTRUM Captain, a bloody nose, and has a small, angry, teacup pug dangling from his right elbow.

White gapes. "What in the blazes happened, man?" 

The man's breathing heavily, the bright rivulet of blood dripping over his lips as he attempts to shake Bertie off.

"He hit me, Sir." He sounds terribly petulant about it. "Caught me by surprise."

"The aquanaut?"

"No, Sir. The butler, Sir."

Virgil almost cracks a smile. Almost.

"Cooperating, are they?"

Another snap -- irritable, this time, the guy’s got the range alright -- and the Manor and the Captain both disappear.

“Hardly the actions of an innocent.”

“Clearly you’ve never met Parker,” scoffs Scott. “I don’t believe a word of any of this -- I don’t know where the hell you’ve got your information from but --”

“When we began this investigation,” White interrupts without even looking at him, “I never believed a word of it. I really had hoped _you_ might be more inclined to see our point of view, Jeff.”

“Sorry, which point of view was that again?” John sneers. “The one where you think we’re funding _terrorism_ ? This is a _rescue organisation_!”

“Yes indeed, a noble pursuit! And so very good for the Tracy name.” One of White’s eyebrows ticks up. John just scowls. “An ungenerous soul might even suggest it could cover quite the multitude of sins, wouldn’t you say, John?”

Scott steps in again, shouldering his way between White and John and turning the full force of his glare on the Colonel.

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

“Now, now. Insinuating suggests I don’t have proof. I was hoping Lady Penelope might be a little more forthcoming, but no mind. Jeff?” All eyes turn to their father. He hasn’t left the desk, his own eyes fixed on the reams of information spilling out of the tablet before him. “Why don’t you ask John about Tokyo?”

Their dad opens his mouth as though to speak, then snaps it shut. White just sighs. Alan looks from his dad to Scott to John wracking his own brain for any rescue gone wrong, any dodgy risks that may have been taken, but it’s _John_ . John _wouldn’t_.

It dawns on him at the same moment his father speaks, and it’s as though his blood freezes in his veins.

“I believe Commander White is talking about the train.”

“ _The train_ .” White says. “Indeed. Or perhaps if we can speak frankly, the train _you_ derailed using a computer programme of _your_ invention.”

“It didn’t derail,” Scott spits out. White smiles. Not kindly.

“No, of course. Because International Rescue were there to save the day. Rather a coincidence wouldn’t you say?”

“No, I --”

"Because no one would believe that those boys in blue could _possibly_ be profiteering from less salubrious practices would they? Not when they're so _heroic_ . And your presence on the board -- why Lady Penelope is _infamously_ devoted to the betterment of all." White turns on John. "Only a genius could keep it running as long as you have, honestly, were I anyone else I'd applaud you."

"You have _no idea_ \-- this is _bull --_ "

“So you’ll understand,” White continues, Scott's protests falling on uninterested ears, and there’s the flash of something metallic in his hand. Kayo’s grip tightens on Alan’s shoulder. “That you cannot be allowed to continue. Your access to Thunderbird Five has been decreed a danger under international law, and so I am obliged to place John Tracy under arrest.”

“The hell you will!”

Scott’s quicksilver, his right hook connecting with White’s jaw in the same instant as Virgil launches himself at him. He catches his elbow on the backswing, and some faint, distant part of Alan compares him, not necessarily unfavourably, to Sherbet. 

“Scott!”

“Get _off_ , Virgil!”

“Not a -- Scott, stop it!”

“Boys.” Their father doesn’t have to shout, doesn’t even have to stand. He just lays the palms of his hands flat on the desk and stares at them over the top of his glasses. “Enough.”

White staggers upright from where Scott’s punch has sent him careening into the couch, cradling his jaw in his hand. “I --”

“No.” He stands then, Jefferson Tracy, all six feet plus of him, and even thin and grey and tired as he looks, in that moment Alan sees the man that changed the world. He sees his dad. “What will it take.”

White scoffs, though it’s muffled by his hand. “Are you trying to bribe me now?”

“Not at all,” Jeff says. “If I thought money would get rid of you, Charles, I’d have paid you off hours ago. You want John, you can’t have him. Choose something else.”

Kayo’s fingers are digging in hard enough to leave bruises at his collarbone, but Alan doesn’t move, no one does. There’s total silence for what feels like minutes, the only movement in the room the angry heaving of Scott’s shoulders. And then White drops his hand, shows his bloodstained teeth.

“Well,” he says. “Funny you should say that.”

Twin holograms blink into life. Colonel Casey stands, formal and rigid, on one side of the pit. On the other, the cool grey and white of Global One flickers, oddly unsteady, as Captain O'Bannon concentrates on something outside of the projector's range.

"Colonel Casey." There's something gleeful in the way White says it. "Thank you for joining us."

"I wasn't aware it was a request I could refuse," she says, then, her eyes flicking from Scott, to their dad and then settling firmly, pleadingly almost, on John, "I want you to know -- I want you all to know I had no part in this. It's beyond my jurisdiction, and I'm sorry for it. I truly am."

"Valerie, what's the meaning of this?"

"Jeff, haven't you been paying attention?" White tuts, shaking his head sadly. "I'm doing as you _asked_. Keep the young man here, lose the station."

Alan scoffs. "You can't just _take_ Thunderbird Five!"

"Yes, it's rather impractical. Mothballing such an impressive feat of engineering would be almost impossible, so along with our GDF colleagues we came up with a solution."

“You can’t -- ” Alan tries again, but he's looking at John, and John's looking at White, his lips a thin bloodless line, his fists clenched.

“I assure you I can,” White says, vindictive as he dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief. “Your license is revoked. Your station is to be seized, and is no longer permitted to remain in geostationary orbit.”

“What do you mean, _permitted_?”

White spares him a glance that makes Alan's blood run cold.

“I mean, Mr Tracy, that Thunderbird Five is coming down.”

John goes sheet white. For a moment he even looks like he might faint, and Virgil is forced to release Scott in order to grab for him as he sways on the spot. Alan -- Alan _laughs,_ he can’t help it, the whole idea is so ludicrous, so _insane_ , that it has him _snorting_. 

“This is a _joke_ , right Dad? Aunt Val? This is -- this is _insane_!”

Nobody else is laughing.

"Captain O'Bannon, is Global One prepared to engage?"

Ridley is looking down, perhaps at her instruments, perhaps at her feet. Either way, she only closes her eyes at the sound of her name.

“Ridley. Ridley, don’t.”

“I have -- I have _orders_ , John -- I can’t --”

“You -- don’t you owe me? You said you owed me!” And it’s not funny, now. It’s not funny at all because John -- Alan’s never heard John sound like that before. Not ever. Not once.

Maybe once.

_“Dad’s -- Dad’s not coming home, Alan.”_

Ridley turns her head, squeezes her eyes tighter. Colonel Casey is wringing her hands behind her back, her jaw clenched. 

“Captain O’Bannon,” White says. “Fire.”

“It’s not -- the firepower -- the sequence --” she looks up, holds John’s gaze. “T-25. I’m on it.”

John’s shoulders slump, a long shuddering breath escapes him, and White turns to the picture window with his hands neatly tucked behind his back.

Ridley nods, just once, and then --

The world as Alan knows it falls apart.

\---

It takes seventeen minutes and eight seconds for the last piece of Thunderbird Five to hit the water.

It’s unrecognisable, just another black and smoking bit of debris to float or sink out in the south pacific with all the other bits of humanity’s detritus, but Alan watches it all the same. He presses his nose up against the glass, his breath leaving patches of condensation as he struggles to keep it steady.

He doesn’t dare turn around. He can see enough in the reflections on the glass.

Turns out the death of Thunderbird Five is easier to watch.

John’s sitting on the couch, stock still. Grandma's murmuring to him but his expression hasn’t changed from the moment Five had hit the atmosphere, hadn’t changed while Scott raged and Virgil begged and Dad --

Dad hadn’t done anything. 

Not when White had clapped his hands together, all _satisfied_ , and announced that they’re _grounded_ . Locked down. That any Thunderbird seen in flight or at sea would be _shot on sight_ and -- and he’d just _left_ . Hopped in his little plane, taxied down Virgil’s runway and _fucked right off_ . And they’d _let him_.

Dad hasn’t moved, either.

On the other side of the glass, down by the pool, Alan focuses on the blurry figure of Brains, down on his knees, his head in his hands, and he realises -- this is _it_.

Without Thunderbird Five, without the support of the GDF, International Rescue is _dead_ . _Kaput._ Finished. _Forever_.

There’s a horrible ringing noise in his ears, a funny sort of buzzing in his skin, and he wonders if he’s about to just fizzle out of existence too. A hologram, a fraud, his whole _actual_ life built on some sort of lie that he can’t -- he _can’t --_

John’s reflection rises, zombie-like, and heads silently for the hanger. Grandma watches him go. She looks tiny in the glass. Weak. Alan huffs out a warm breath and blocks her out entirely.

Scott, though. Scott’s pacing. His hands are fists, his body strung tight, and his words -- his words are vicious and vile and louder even than the ringing. 

“Fucking absolute -- I’ll kill ‘em, I swear it. I’ll _ruin_ them, every last damn one of them. I don’t care who they are, I don’t _care_ what it takes, the whole damn organisation, I’ll --”

“Scott --”

“No! No, Virgil! They can’t -- they can’t drag our name, _Dad’s_ name though the mud like this! Look what they've done to Five! To John! They can’t get away with this -- they _can’t --”_

Alan doesn't see the moment Scott turns on their father, but he sees it coming, closes his eyes just as Scott spins to face the desk and the silent figure behind it. He must have a glass of scotch in his hand, because Alan hears the moment Scott sweeps it away. Hears the splintering of glass and family all at once.

“And you! What, you’re just going to _take it_ ? After everything? After everything we’ve _done_ ? Eight years of our lives, for _nothing_?”

"What would you have me do, Scott?"

The silence is heavy. The silence is _worse._

And then, “If you won’t do something. I will.”

Alan’s eyes snap open and he turns to see Scott looming over their father, Virgil two steps behind him, eyes flitting from brother to father and back again. He’s crying, Alan realises. There are wet marks on their father’s cheeks, and he looks small. Small and lost and now Alan’s crying too, big ugly tears that he tries to scrub away before anyone sees. But no-one’s looking at Alan. Not now.

“You’ll be operating outside the law. There will be no protection. No fallback.”

“I know that.”

“They’ll shoot you down.”

“They’ll have to catch me first.”

“Us.” Virgil steps up alongside Scott, puts his hand on his shoulder. “They’ll have to catch us first.”

Jeff looks down at the desk, squeezes his eyes shut and Scott -- Scott’s _gone._ Virgil on his heels as ever, like always and Grandma -- Alan can hear Grandma crying out their names as she rushes toward the hanger but it sounds as though it’s coming from underwater. From another galaxy. All he can concentrate on is the way the chutes slam shut. The way neither of them look back.

The way they leave him _behind_.

Jeff rises at last, the slow, creaking motions of an old man, and Alan bolts after him.

“Dad? Dad!” Alan grabs for his sleeve, damp fingers slipping as his father pulls away. “You’re not -- you’re not letting them go are you?”

His father blinks at him. “I can’t stop them.”

“Cant -- of course you can stop them! You could have stopped all of it! You’re Jeff Tracy you can do an--”

“Enough!” Jeff’s roar reverberates through the villa, loud as Three’s take off but with none of it’s comfort, and Alan snaps back as though he’s been slapped. Bloodshot grey meets teary blue before Jeff storms off, grabbing the half empty bottle of whisky as he goes. 

And Alan, who has never been alone, not once, not in his whole entire life, is left with nothing but the echo.


	9. The Book of John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey I recognise some of this, you say. Wasn't this in the last chapter?  
> No. Of course it wasn't. Don't look over here, look over the-- yeah. Yeah I fucked up. But uh, enjoy anyway??

**Hampshire, an hour ago.**

The weird thing is that he ought to feel happy, lighter, _better_ , for speaking to his brother and he does. He does. But still. He is in possession of the infamous Gordon Tracy squid sense and there's a man in a suit stood at his father's desk, a nasty leaden dread lingering in his belly.

"Penny for your thoughts, darling?"

She’s standing at the far end of the hallway, her hair falling around her face, mascara smeared and a graze on her right knee and he physically feels the tension leave his shoulders.

“Not worth that much.” He smiles up at her, still on his knees. “Good night?”

"Oh, average I suppose." She tucks an errant curl behind her ear and steps toward him. "Not one for the biography, but you ought to see the other chap."

She runs her fingers through his hair as she reaches him and Gordon leans into it, presses his cheek into her palm.

"Gordon?" She runs her thumb across the furrow between his eyebrows. "You seem a little on edge, darling."

"Do I?"

"Unless there's something particularly interesting about the parquet?"

He drops the comm, wraps his arms around her and sighs into her belly.

"S'cool. Just -- not used to being on my own I guess."

Penny slips down through the circle of his arms to join him on the floor, tucking her legs underneath her as she picks up the comm.

"Did you have a nice chat with Alan?"

He means to tell her, he does, but her smile looks tight and the dark smudges under her eyes aren’t all mascara and it’s late and he’s _missed_ her. It can wait.

“Yeah. I did, yeah.”

“Good.” She places the comm back in his hand and folds his fingers over it. “I’m glad.” 

“Me too, _but_.” He jumps to his feet in a single smooth motion, pulling her up after him and grinning as she laughs. “Don’t wanna think about Alan right now, actually. Got better things to --” he stops, takes a breath, means it. “I missed you, y’know.”

Penelope beams, and his heart lurches. It’s gonna _have_ to wait.

“Missed you too -- oh!” he tugs her after him back up the hallway, up the back staircase to the bedrooms tossing a salute to a scowling Parker as they pass him in the corridor. “Gordon!”

“Oh, like he doesn’t _know_.” He throws open the door to the bedroom, slams it behind them and wriggles his eyebrows. “He’s got _ears_ , your Ladyship.”

Penelope gasps, hands torn from his to clutch at her throat as he backs her toward the bed. “The _audacity_!”

“The _accuracy_.”

“Well then, I shall endeavour to keep my mouth shut.”

“Bet you can’t.”

Penelope bites her lip, her eyes twinkling, and reaches up to pull at the hairpins holding most of her curls in place. Her chest rises with the action and Gordon hums, delighted.

“You know I could kill you where you stand?” She rolls a pin between her fingertips, looks him up and down as her other hand stretches for her zip. “Fifteen different ways.”

“I like this way,” he says as her dress slips from her shoulders to pool around her waist. “Need a hand with that?”

“Men.” She sighs, turning her back on him as she shakes her hair free, shimmies her hips. “So predictable -- _ah_!”

He whips off his shirt with one hand and uses the other arm to lift her off her feet. She squeals, kicking out half heartedly as he throws them both onto the bed, landing on his back with her body held tight against his, one hand already questing for the edge of her underwear, his teeth at her throat. He waits for her to melt against him, her hips shifting as he teases at the pale lace.

“No hidden knives today, m’lady?”.

“Ah -- left it, left it elsewhere I’m afraid.”

She parts her legs, wriggles her right calf under his so that his weight holds it there, and he smiles against her pulse point as his hand stills and she _keens_. The sound vibrates through him, settles in his belly and at the base of his spine, makes him bold enough to wrap her hair around his fist and pull gently until she makes it again.

“Sorry?” he murmurs, “Didn’t catch that, say again?”

He lays his palm flat against her belly and taps his fingers lightly. Penny growls.

“Nuh huh, sorry, can’t _quite_ hear you.”

“You’re an utter beast, Gordon Tracy.”

“Yeah but you love me.”

He doesn’t realise he’s said it until it’s too late, until she’s already arcing into his touch, until her lips are already moving and his hand’s covered by hers and _dragged_ downward.

“Oh but I --”

A blast of cool air, the squeal of hinges, and Penny’s _gone_ , scrambling her way up the bed with the comforter dragged up to her chin and a look on her face that promises _violence_. Gordon hardly has time to blink at the figure wearing striped pyjamas and a funny looking sort of gnome hat who’s appeared at the end of their bed before Penny’s practically _shrieking_ her displeasure.

"Parker! Have you taken leave of your _senses_?!" 

In Parker’s defence -- not that Gordon’s inclined to it -- he is practically fluorescent, one hand slapped hastily over his eyes and the other waving about like a half suffocated fish.

"Beggin' your pardon M'ladyship, but we have a visitor.”

"A visitor?" she hisses, grabbing for the silk robe draped over the end of the bed. "It's _Tuesday_."

"It's also like… the middle of the night," Gordon adds. "So there's that."

Penelope launches his trousers at him.

"There's only one type of visitor who appears uninvited at midnight on a Tuesday," she states grimly, tying her robe rather more aggressively than necessary. 

"Drunkones?"

She doesn't look at him as he stumbles his way into decency, only narrows icy eyes and snaps, " _Unwelcome_ ones."

\--

The man in the parlour looks -- uncomfortable isn’t really the word for it. He looks like there’s someone holding a gun to his head. But then Parker is stood at his shoulder, so maybe there is.

“It’s rather late,” Penelope says, smoothing her robe over her knees as she sits, poised and regal, on the love seat. “I do hope this isn’t intended to be a social call.”

He balks slightly at that -- or maybe it’s at the way Parker pushes himself forward, corrals him onto the sofa opposite Penelope and then stands behind him, a perfect mirror image to Gordon’s own stance.

“Lady Penelope --”

Penelope holds up a hand. Her posture is perfectly straight, and Gordon can see the tension in her spine. “Your Ladyship, if you please.” 

Their visitor inclines his head slightly. “Your Ladyship. I’m afraid that I have come to discuss some -- rather _unpleasant_ matters. Perhaps you would prefer privacy?” His eyes flick up to Gordon’s for half a second. Nervous. Apologetic almost. They’re not the eyes Gordon might have expected to see attached to an agent of SPECTRUM, but then he’s never really met one before. Never had to. He’s seen the shadowy figures lingering after a GDF debrief, heard the name over communications he shouldn’t have been listening in on, but SPECTRUM have been no more a part of his life than that long lost dream of WASP. 

He can’t for the life of him figure out why they’ve turned up now. He’s still in his goddamn pyjamas for fuck’s sake.

“I assure you,” Penelope states, “that there is absolutely nothing that you could possibly have to say to me that --”

“It’s about International Rescue.”

He’s a brave man, interrupting Penelope. Gordon will give him that, but it’s not Penelope he needs to worry about. Gordon’s already rounded the couch, fists white knuckle tight even as Penny catches at his forearm.

“What about -- what’s happened? Is someone --” he trails off, dread thick in his throat, and thinks of Alan tucked up behind the cheese plant and Scott stood glaring holes in the back of suited up strangers. “Did something happen?”

SPECTRUM inclines his head slightly, but he only addresses Penelope.

“Lady Penelope --”

It’s her turn to interrupt now, snide and haughty as Gordon thinks he’s ever heard her, her nails digging little half moons into his skin. 

“Your _Ladyship._ And he asked you a question.” She half laughs. Cold and bitter. “What does SPECTRUM even know about International Rescue?”

“Lady _Penelope_ ,” he says again. “I am not here to answer your questions. I’m afraid you are obliged to answer mine.”

Penelope drops Gordon’s arm and shifts her weight in silent invitation. Gordon drops to the loveseat beside her and attempts to school his expression into a matching one of cool indifference even as his so-called squid sense blares a dozen frenetic alarms at him.

“Well, Sir? Captain, is it?” She tilts her head slightly, and it might look convivial were her lips not thin and bloodless, her eyes like flint. “I suppose you had better ask one, and try your luck.”

“Do you sit upon the board of Tracy Industries?”

Only the tiniest flicker of Penelope’s eyebrows gives away that this is a somewhat surprising question. 

“That’s a matter of public record,” she says. 

“So you don’t deny it?”

“It would seem a rather futile exercise, would it not?” The hand on Gordon’s knee flexes gently. “I have resigned from the post, if that information will encourage you to take your leave any sooner?”

At her feet, Bertie grumbles his agreement. SPECTRUM continues undaunted.

“And in that role, did you direct the board toward the most prudent investments?”

“On occasion.”

SPECTRUM withdraws a tiny projector from his pocket and flicks it into life with his thumb. 

“Do any of these occasions look familiar?”

One of the advantages -- and there are an awful lot of them -- of growing up the son of an actual billionaire, is that money tends to become a nebulous sort of concept in the day to day. As long as there are credits for take out and fuel for Four Gordon’s been happy. Satisfied. Ignorant.

He isn’t ignorant anymore.

The numbers that fly out of SPECTRUM’s hand to whizz between them are -- horrifying, honestly -- and huge almost beyond his comprehension. There's a surrealism to seeing such things attached to _his family name_ and -- 

Other things. Oh man there are other things.

He peers a little closer. “Wait, isn’t that --”

Penelope’s on her feet in an instant, snatching at figures as they fly past, her mouth twisted in disgust. “Where did you get this information? This is --”

“We have our contacts, Your Ladyship.” He sounds smug now, SPECTRUM. A man who’s pulled the ultimate checkmate from the jaws of defeat, Penelope’s jaw dropping as her own signature spins, neon and damning, above the coffee table. “Is this your signature?”

“Y-yes, but I --”

SPECTRUM stands, tall enough to tower over Penelope in her bare feet, and something dark and unmentionable wraps its fingers around Gordon’s heart and _squeezes_.

“Penelope Creighton-Ward, I am arresting you on suspicion of terrorism offences under the GDF Terror Act 205 --”

“You’re _what_?!”

Everybody moves at once, everybody that is except Penelope who stands, frozen, as SPECTRUM makes a grab for her wrists, Gordon bodily launching himself between them, fists raised and ready.

“Don’t you _dare_ , don’t lay a finger on her or I swear I’ll --” Flannelette blurs behind SPECTRUM's smug little sneer followed by a frantic cry of, 

“Parker!”

SPECTRUM drops like a stone, a thin red line dribbling from his temple to join the gush of gore from his clearly broken nose. Parker steps back and tosses a marble bust of Penelope's grandmother from hand to hand. She's got a matching red mark on her own temple, and her stone eyes glare sightlessly down at her unfortunate victim.

The silence that follows is thick as Grandma’s soup and just as threatening. The weight of it amplifying the tick tick tick of the mantelpiece clock until Gordon's sure it's actually his pulse counting down to something he can't begin to imagine but already knows well enough to dread.

“Rather an unpleasant sort of chap,” Parker says eventually, as though commenting on a touch of inclement weather. “That ought to slow ‘im down. M’Lady?”

Penelope’s holding the wrist that the unfortunate Captain had grabbed at with her other hand, her pale, expressionless face turned toward the still flashing projector and the man bleeding on her rug. She doesn't acknowledge Parker or Gordon as he turns to face her, only mutters something under her breath that he can't quite make out.

“Penny? Hey, hey you okay?” Gordon tilts her chin up with his thumb, bites his lip at the glazed, hopeless look she offers him. “It’s some sort of mistake, that’s all. We’ll sort it. Dad -- “ he swallows. “Dad will fix it.”

“Is it?” Her voice is steady but he can feel a tremble run through her. “That was my signature, Gordon. And those accounts -- I’d never, I would _never_ \--”

“Hey, no, of course not. Of _course_ not,” he brings his other hand up to cup her face. “I don’t pretend to know _half_ of what all that was but --”

Penny shakes her head. A sharp, pained little motion. “If you don’t know what it is, how do you know I didn’t do it?”

Gordon drops his forehead against hers, wills his voice steady despite the bitter sting of panic at the back of his throat. “Is it bad?”

Her voice trembles, and he feels the grip on his heart grow tighter still until he’s sure it might crack. “Oh, passably so.”

“Then you didn’t do it.” He pats her cheek. “There.”

She huffs out a laugh, shakes her head again, but her hand comes up to cover his and squeezes. “That’s enough for you, is it?”

“Of course it is.” He shrugs, far more casual than he feels but this -- this is simple, isn’t it? This is easy. “It’s you.”

Penny presses her cheek into their joined hands and lets her eyelids flutter shut. “I have done nothing to deserve you.”

And then it’s his turn to laugh, the fuzzy little curls at her temple tickling him as he presses his lips against them. “And yet, you’re stuck with me. Shit happens I guess.”

The little noise she makes softens the ache in his chest, both her arms wrapping round him to squeeze tight. “Well, thank goodness it does.”

Parker clears his throat. “Begging me pardon M’Lady, but this does seem to be a time sensitive matter?” He nods at the unconscious figure on the floor who, as if to prove his point, lets out a low, pained groan.

Penelope steps aside, her hands shifting to her hips as she toes gently at a limp arm.

“Yes, well. At least he’s not dead, that would cause rather the dust up once this is all straightened out. Parker?”

Parker immediately snaps to attention. “Plan B is it M’Lady?”

“Alas, that does appear to be the way things are going. One had better make oneself scarce.” She turns her face up to Gordon, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. “Gordon? Are you quite sure --”

He’s the one shaking his head now. Sharp and certain. “I go where you go.”

“All right. Bertie?” Her nose crinkles as SPECTRUM twitches weakly. “Watch him.”

\---

The vault shouldn’t really come as a surprise -- in fact it doesn’t. It makes perfect sense for a manor with the age and pedigree and occupants of this one to have secret doorways that only appear with the tap of a book, great steel doors that open only to the touch of Penelope’s palm. What’s _inside_? That’s a different story.

"You packed me a "running away in the dead of night" bag?"

On her knees on the concrete floor and elbows deep in bags of clothing and supplies, Penelope hardly spares him a tut.

"It's an emergency kit dear, do keep up."

The bag that Parker unceremoniously shoves into his arms has a tiny, pink-gold G on the zipper pull. It lies neat and surprisingly heavy in his palm, glinting in the low emergency lighting like fool's gold on a cavern floor.

"Since when?"

"Does it matter?" She's turned her attention to a wall cabinet, to the weaponry within, and Gordon tries not to wince as she stuffs boxes of ammunition into her bag, slips a pistol into the holster she's wrapped around her waist and a knife into the belt at her calf. Her silk robe lies in a discarded heap, the clothes she's thrown on in its stead dark and nondescript. From behind, her hair roughly pulled up on top of her head, she's almost unrecognisable. "Parker, send my father a message on the secure line -- then blow the connection. No more communicators. We don't want any more of our SPECTRUM friends paying us a visit, not until we've a better idea of what they think they're playing at least."

Gordon balks.

"Penny, I need to call Scott, I --"

"No." She spins on her heel, brows drawn low. "No I'm afraid that won't be possible, Gordon. We don't know what's happening and until we do we cannot be in contact with anyone who might pose a threat."

He staggers backward as though she's slapped him. 

"You're not serious? _Scott_?"

Her mouth is thin and bloodless, her eyes ice, as she takes another pistol from the cabinet and holds it out, grip first.

"Deadly."

"Penny --”

He doesn’t get any further. Can’t. Because Parker’s forcing himself between them, his holocomm held out like a prize. His eyes are big in the refracted light, and for the first time tonight -- for the first time _ever_ probably -- Gordon recognises genuine terror in the depths of them.

“Christ on a -- I think you ought to see this!"

“See _what_ , Parker.” Then, lower, “someone had _better_ be dying.”

Parker groans, and Gordon’s heart sinks, that ever present squid sense rising up to choke him. The unit in Parker's flailing hand bursts into life, filling the room with the huge, familiar figure of Alan’s new college buddy Brandon.

“A vlog?” starts Penny, but Parker hushes her.

“Live, M'Lady, it’s --”

“I cannot _believe --_ this is too wild you guys!” Brandon’s holding the camera, spinning it round too quickly for Gordon to catch much other than the blue blur of the ocean, the edge of a ship’s deck. "This is -- this is _way_ too -- I cannot believe what I'm looking at dudes it's --"

The camera is _shaking_ and for a professional blogger Brandon sure ought to invest in like a tripod or _something_ because Gordon can hardly make out anything beyond the expanse of sky, now. And a single dot, dark and distant but coming closer and closer. Bigger. Brighter. The focus clears and Penny scrambles closer, her eyes wide.

"Is that?"

It is. And visible still, barely, through the smoke and the distortion, is the gold and blue, the crumbling gravity ring, the brain and the heart of the whole damn thing -- of Gordon's whole damn life.

Thunderbird Five shudders, cracks, burns it's way through the upper atmosphere as Brandon Berrenger splutters at his good luck and Gordon --

Gordon forgets everything. He forgets where he is, who he’s with, who he _is_. He forgets calmness under pressure, forgets years of training, forgets every breathing exercise. 

Forgets everything, except one word _._

"John! _John!_ "

**\---**

The hanger is huge, always huge, too huge by far even for the machines that call it home. It’s a vast, echoing cavern at the centre of the island, of their lives, of the nightmare he finds himself in, and it stinks of oil and fumes and iron and _sweat._ He can't stand it, not for a second longer. He's got to _wake up_.

He smacks his hand against the controls for the space elevator, the whine of the attempted connection vibrating up his arm as he grits his teeth. _Again._ Harder. _Work_ , _work, work_. Why won’t it -- why won’t anything _work_.

Three would work. Three’s not Alan’s any more and Five’s -- Three will work.

There’s a cabinet with uniforms all ready to go, spares, for when heading back upstairs just to suit up is a luxury they can ill afford, and it opens with the swift application of his foot when he can’t quite seem to remember the codes for the lock.

Five suits hang there, set up, ready to go. Blue, green, red, orange. Yellow. Yellow but there’s something not quite right about it and he runs a finger over the edge of the rebreather. Stares, dumbfounded, as it comes away grey with dust.

This is wrong. Everything about this is _wrong_. He can't think straight, it's this planet, the gravity. It's the air, the smell, the incessant _noise._ He needs -- he needs to --

“John?”

He bunches his fist around the sleeve of his suit. Feels sensors crack in his grip. 

“John, what are you --”

“What,” he hisses, spins on his heels and the hanger keeps spinning after he’s stopped. Virgil’s face is pale and Scott’s beet red. “Do you _think_ I’m doing?”

Virgil takes half a step forward, his hand held out and John glares at it. Wrong. Wrong. _Wrong._

“There’s --” A heavy breath. ”John, she’s gone.”

There’s a fizzing in his ears that won’t go away -- a high pitched static that’s been thrumming through him since about fifteen point six seconds after Colonel White first said his name -- and it kicks up a notch, grows louder and more insistent at the sight of Virgil’s grossly sympathetic expression.

He doesn’t want _sympathy_ . He doesn’t want to -- to _talk_ or _mourn_ or do any of the other things that Virgil is so keen on because they’re _healthy_ and _normal, John, come on_ . He wants, he decides as the fizzing grows louder and more insistent, to make somebody _pay_.

And Scott is right there. Scott with his volcanic temper and his sheer brass balls. Scott who has carried this entire organisation on his shoulders for years only to see it brought crashing down at the moment that should have been , would have been, the perfect happy ending.

“Where are _you_ going?”

Scott’s eyes narrow. “Your turn for the stupid questions?”

“Hardly,” he scoffs, and the white noise coalesces into something more steady. An electrical heartbeat, all ones and zeroes and he can use that. That’s useful. Scott’s got his shoulders back, his jaw tight, and that -- that’s useful too. 

Or it will be.

"They'll shoot you down.”

"They'll try."

"They've already --" He can't make himself say it, his tongue too big, too slow for his mouth. A man who does nothing but speak, muted. There’s an irony there, somewhere. He smacks his lips together, shakes his head. “What will you do?”

Scott stares at him as though that’s the last thing he expected to be asked. “What do you mean?”

“If they don’t --” He swallows it again, a nasty, solid lump that he can’t spit out. “What _exactly_ are you going to do? Destroy them? SPECTRUM? The GDF? Tracy Industries? _Penelope_? What. Are you going. To. Do? Because you’re going to have to do _something_ , Scott. We have to do something because this -- this can’t be allowed to stand. You know that, don’t you?”

“John, I really --”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Virgil.” It’s snappish and cruel but it does the job, Virgil slipping back into Scott’s shadow as he considers John’s words. And he is considering them, John can tell by the tick in his jaw, the deepening of the dimple in his cheek. Scott’s easy like that, sometimes. “So?”

Scott looks at Virgil; Virgil looks at Scott. John raises his eyes to the empty heavens.

"You haven't got it in you, either of you. I'm coming."

Virgil scrubs a fist over his eyes. “That’s not a good --”

“Idea?” He feels his mouth twist into something he doesn’t quite recognise as a smile. “Better leave those to me.”

It’s a standoff, except it isn’t. John already knows he’s won. He can see the cogs turning in Scott’s mind -- the _advantages_ of having John along swiftly outweighing whatever protective brotherly instinct might want to send him back up to the villa -- and Virgil’s shoulders have already dropped, defeated, between the twin immovable forces of Scott’s hot temper and John’s cold fury.

Scott’s lip curls. "Well then, gentlemen. I guess Thunderbirds are gone."


End file.
